And only now is the prosecutor finished with an indictment that includes Saab’s last principal owner Victor Muller.
You must have respect for the complexity found in most financial crime investigations. But the prosecution finally woken at Vanersborg District Court yesterday was only two payments to Saab. These transactions were included in the records, and the simple question is whether the vouchers for these payments, two invoices issued on the Cypriot company Duke Level Holdings Ltd., is correct. The prosecutor believes that they are untrue and that it was in fact a payment from the blacklisted businessman Vladimir Antonov.
“The Government went in with high stakes in the game to get the company to survive.”
There had been a major social interest if the prosecutor had worked faster with this case (the long and enormously costly bankruptcy investigation is painful enough). It took, for example, two years after the high-profile arrest of, among others, former CEO Jan Ake Jonsson before the prosecutor interrogated protagonist Victor Muller.
This is not about the car brand Saab was a national treasure, but of governments and many others went in with high stakes in the game to get the company to survive. The government, with Maud Olofsson, risked 4 billion in tax money by going surety for Saab Automobile loans from the European Central Bank. It was foolhardy even then and now we have the benefit of hindsight. The parts company, renamed Orio, which the state had pledged reported a week ago, another year of reduced sales and additionally loss.
Thousands of employees providers put their hope that Victor Muller could save Saab. Circumstances meant that they saw him as a creative hero rather than an illusionist.
The slow death process led to a shortage in the estate of SEK 9.4 billion. The state will lose money. Vendors have already done it. Chinese Nevs paid only 1.7 billion of assets.
What price is for a slow government management, economic and confidence-wise, we know not yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment