Former ABB boss gets three years

(AFP) A former executive at the Swiss-Swedish engineering group ABB was on Wednesday sentenced in a Stockholm court to three years in prison for embezzling funds while he worked for the company.

Peter Fallenius, 54, a former vice president on the Swedish side of ABB, was found guilty of embezzlement, accounting fraud and obstructing tax audits in the late 1990s, the Södra Roslags court said.

Fallenius, who was among other things charged with having pocketed 1.8 million kronor of ABB’s money, has also been barred from practicing business for three years after he completes his sentence.

The former executive has claimed that the vanished money had been used for company purposes, including paying two consultancies to bribe Romanian officials, but the court ruled that he had lined his own pockets with the cash.

Fallenius was however cleared on charges of tax and stock trading crimes, and was only handed a three-year sentence despite prosecutors’ call for him to spend four years behind bars.