The agreement with the company that managed the telephone sales of Kombispel’s lotteries is terminated, announced S party secretary Tobias Baudin at a press conference on Friday.
CEO Jonas Lindholm is fired and the entire board is also asked to leave.
The Social Democrats’ lotteries
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Internal S-criticism: Demands that the management of the A-lottery resigns
According to DN’s review the salespeople at the telemarketing company Effective Communication have been asked to be aggressive. Former employees, who were based out of Barcelona, have said that they particularly focused on older people and deliberately withheld purchase conditions, such as the fact that it was a subscription.
Does not exclude own telephone sales
Tobias Baudin says he takes the revelations seriously.
– It is completely worthy. It should not occur in any business, and above all not in any business we stand behind, he says.
Why haven’t you checked that your lottery tickets have been sold in an honest way?
– Ultimately, the responsibility to control this rests with the board, that is why I have now said that we have no confidence in anyone on the board for Kombispel and will call an extraordinary general meeting and elect a new board.
Even if S stops using telemarketing companies, this does not mean a stop to phone sales of lottery tickets. The party’s press service informs SVT Nyheter that the party does not rule out taking over the sale under its own auspices in the future.
Anger internally
Several S representatives have reacted to the revelations in DN’s review and demanded that management act. Friday’s press conference was held after an extraordinary meeting of the executive committee. The measures that were then announced were expected, according to SVT’s political reporter Ulf Hambraeus.
– The outrage has been enormous over this, he says SVT’s live broadcast.
Since May 2022, Kombispel has been reported 28 times to the Swedish Consumer Agency. 18 of these are about telephone sales.