Another scandal around TeliaSonera broken out in Sweden

The company, which cooperated with the Belarusian regime, is a sponsor of the Eurovision-2013 song competition.

The preparation is in full play to the final of the song competition Euroevision-2013 that will take place on Saturday in Malmo, Sweden. In the meanwhile human rights activists are filled with indignation that the event’s main sponsor is a telecommunication company TeliaSonora with a blemished reputation. It is being accused of providing the governments of post-Soviet states with an unlimited access to private phones and e-mail of the citizens, a web-site evrofor.ru repots.

When Swedish singer Loreen won the song competition last year in Baku, she acted like a human rights defender in the post-Soviet area. She revolted against human rights violations in Azerbaijan, where, according to her, “human rights are violated daily”. Loreen criticized Belarusian ruler Aliaksandr Lukashenka, who persecutes civic activists and sends them to jails, like Ales Bialatski, for example.

“This is the pain of my heart, such a wonderful family is broken, when a son is at one place, another one is in the other, the father is in prison, and they fight for justice”, - Loreen stated.

There were hopes that as the Eurovision-2013’s host liberal Sweden would show its hospitality at the 58th song competition with human rights protection in the background. But, as human rights activists note, this has not happened. The essence of the matter is the main sponsor of the current Eurovision in Swedish Malmo – a telecommunication giant TeliaSonera.

Now an investigation of the company’s activities is taking place. It is being accused of giving multimillion bribes to Karimov’s regime in Uzbekistan in exchange for the access to the mass phone market of the country. The accusations also concern providing the governments of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with private phones and e-mails, which was used by these governments to persecute their political rivals.  

According to the audience, Belarus’ KGB has also acquired an unlimited access to private cell-phone communications thanks to the local office of TeliaSonera.

In the meanwhile public and human rights activists revolt that such a company as TeliaSonera has got an opportunity to be Eurovision’s sponsor.