Friday, February 16, 2007

Russian gangsters threaten the half-mother's honchos?

Swedish media are reporting that top managers of Lattelecom's half-mother TeliaSonera are being guarded by armed bodyguards because of unnamed threats to their lives. According to Swedish TV8, these threats may be coming from Russia.
It seems rather a bizarre scenario that Russian goons/hitmen would be sent to Sweden to harm TeliaSonera honchos, but the company does have interests in the Russian mobile market and has been up against Russian bidders for a mobile operator in Turkey. Still, it is far fetched that the Russian mafia would go after anyone other than, at worst, the local TeliaSonera affiliate management in Russia.
Perhaps the Russians don't know about the Swedish James Bond, Carl Hamilton, who would get sent after their sorry asses if they so much as harmed a hair on any Swedish executive's head.

ADDED FEB 16: Just want to credit reader Bleveland for tipping me off to this story. I had to find an English language version so that most readers could understand it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Business is business, nothing personal ... The bigger the business, the bigger the shit surrounding it ... it is everywhere - in Russia, Latvia, Europe, USA or Australia. Russia could be very interesting place ... I have a neighbour who does a business in Russia (30 - 50% of his time he spends living in Russia), but the family lives in Latvia, probably, he is afraid.

Anonymous said...

TeliaSonera is the most dangerous mafia in Baltics. The growth of revenues come from corrupted network and not from their services. It is much easier and cheaper to have your own pocket telecommuntication regulator rather than to invest and compete. In LIthuania they have been spying competitiors with ACB/ITSS from Cibertec (Costa Rica). And what? Not guilty! Some day mafia style business practices should end up with battles like this.