Every year, around 120 billion flows through the country’s condominium associations. This makes the associations attractive to unscrupulous actors and criminals.
– It’s not petty cheating or that you want a little money on the side, but there have been connections to serious organized crime, says Sara Persson, at the Ecocrime Authority.
The Brf cheat
The scheme behind it – this is how housing associations are drained of money
Brfs emptied of millions – hundreds of buyers cheated: “A nightmare”
SVT Nyheter Södertälje can show, among other things, how an entrepreneur from Södertälje drained housing associations of money via systematic cheating and advanced criminal schemes. Something that affected hundreds of buyers.
Thousands of associations affected by eco-crime
A report from 2019 as the trade association The property owners Stockholm did showed that around 3,000 housing associations were affected by financial crime, but the dark figure is believed to be large.
The report is partly based on a survey in which 25 percent of housing associations said that they do not know whether the association has been exposed or not.
The lawyer and bankruptcy administrator Niklas Emthén fits the picture that it has become increasingly common to use condominium associations as criminal tools.
– Money disappears in all possible directions and in several cases we have had reason to suspect that the money ends up in the hands of criminals.
Difficult to get the money back
He has worked with many bankruptcies, primarily in limited companies, but also housing associations and says that it is often difficult to get the money back to the creditors.
– These are quite complex transactions that take place in many stages and once the money ends up at the final destination, it is too far away for us to access it.
Hear crime prevention specialist Sara Persson in the video above about why condominium associations are susceptible to financial crime.
Has your association been exposed to financial crime or do you have tips on something else we should investigate? Email us at [email protected]