“We Have Been Thrown Under the Bus”: : Corporate Versus Individual Defense Mechanisms Against Transnational Corporate Bribery Charges

Summary, in English

The telecommunication company Telia’s dealings in Uzbekistan have resulted in bribery accusations both in Sweden and in abroad. The article analyzes the defense mechanisms produced by both the corporation and the prosecuted former executives of the company. Telia’s initially denial eventually changed into a partial acknowledgment in combination with a scapegoating discourse. While Telia hardly defended itself at all in the Swedish court, the company’s former executives employed a defense of legality, denial of knowledge, of deviance, and of responsibility as well as a claim of being scapegoated. We discuss these developments in the light of the transformation of the Telia case from a mediated corporate scandal to a criminal court case and from a focus on organizational to individual responsibility.

• Author: Isabel Schoultz; Janne Flyghed
• Department/s: Department of Sociology of Law
• Publishing year: 2020-12
• Language: English
• Pages: 24-35
• Publication/Series: Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 1
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2631309X20911883
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Topic: Law and Society
• Keywords: corporate crime; accounts; neutralizations; bribery; court ethnography
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 2631-309X