Svenska kraftnät, the Swedish major customer of the law firm that investigates a conflict of interest

the DN could in the beginning of January reveal konsultupplägg with suspected jävskopplingar at the Swedish national grid. Among other things, had the agency's current director-general, Ulla Sandborgh in his role as director of marketing provided a consultant – who was also her friend – the mission in the millions. A few days later vacationed together in Rio de Janeiro.

Svenska kraftnät's hr director hired in the autumn of 2018 its former partner for a major consulting assignments for the agency. The Hr director and the consultant know each other well, their social media contacts to judge. The contract was budgeted to 690.000 sek, excluding vat, but was terminated early in connection with the DN's review. The reason was according to the authority that it ”does not appear to have been carried out in an absolutely correct way”.

jävskopplingarna in the case of the hr director, the Swedish national grid hired a law firm as an external and independent investigator. They got the contract already a few days before the DN's publishing, in conjunction with a person recommended konsultupplägget to the authority's visselblåsarfunktion.

Today's News can today report that the current law firm – Sigeman – has very close ties to the authority. Svenska kraftnät is since many years the major customer of the agency. In the year 2017 sales Sigeman of seven million, which is more than a quarter of our firm's turnover for the current year (27.7 million dollars). Since 2010, Sigeman billed the authority tens of millions of dollars.

On 24 January extended the Sigeman investigative mission to include the data on to the hr director deleted a large amount of e-mails.

”the Swedish national grid has acted in respect of the plot and the investigation is being conducted by an external party”, wrote the Swedish national grid, in a press release.

and the Swedish national grid, has been criticised internally at the authority. In a post on the intranet write an anonymous employee:

”well, They are hardly independent – they are performing any other mission for us,” writes the person, and further refers to the information reviewed relating to a conflict of interest, ”Should be better to hire a different law firm, one that is not the Swedish national grid hired in the past?”

In another post, write a co-worker: ”How can one safely say that the Sigemans appelate lawyer X did not find issues that are linked to a colleague Y who is involved in another case at the Swedish national grid? Doubtful if this is compatible with good advokatsed”.

, secretary general of the Swedish bar association, says to DN that it is important that an investigation of this type is perceived to be independent:

" I can understand if you raise an eyebrow. It is always tricky when you have a close relationship with a client and, at the same time in the investigation can come forward to things that are of the nature that it harms the client. In it lies a dilemma. There are a förklaringsbörda for the Swedish national grid, " says Anne Ramberg.

She goes on to say that the very integrity is one of the most important qualities for a lawyer. Rambergs assessment is that the mission is not contrary to the advokatetik, but it must be documented in whose interest as you do in this survey:

" It is incredibly important that you make it very clear and clear when you undertake the mission and the framework is very clear. In whose interest is made it? How should the results be presented? How will the examination take place? It is important to really go through it and take a stand to how you are doing with all the material coming in, " says Anne Ramberg.

and took part of the uppdragsbeställningen to the law firm. It is very brief: ”the External investigation commissioned by the utredningsfunktionen”. Any additional written documentation is not available, according to the Swedish national grid. The agency should have been informed orally of what the assignment should include.

the DN has asked the Swedish national grid about their views on the link between the authority and the law firm. In a written comment, write to the press office to see our firm's independence ”which is, of course”. Further, they write: ”It is a professional law firm, where we assume that all queries are dealt impartially”.

the Relationship is commented also on the authority's intranet. Where it says:

”the law Firm take a completely independent approach to the employee who is the subject of the investigation. The law firm has not participated in any way in the preparation of any of the internal guidelines m.m. as actualized in the matter.”

the hr director has admitted for the DN to konsultupplägget may have been inappropriate:

" Because I feel like [the consultant] since the former is one of my most important lessons of this that I can be even more clear if it can be perceived as a jävssituation, by making a jävsanmälan, she said to the Swedish newspaper dagens nyheter in the beginning of January.

Olle Lundin, professor of administrative law at the Legal department at Uppsala university, believes that her action seems to contradict the agency's own rules.

– Since the mission concerning an hr-related question, you can assume that the hr director had a hand in the game. So, it leans definitely to the disqualification, he said in January.