Economic crime defence: scope, fixed-price products and how a matter runs is answered in three parts: the practice covers everything from a first police contact to a prosecution decision and, where the case proceeds, trial; each stage is sold as a fixed-price product rather than billed by the hour; and a matter moves through a fixed sequence of decision points.
Who this concerns
This hub sits within Lodline's wider set of practices, and most readers land here in one of three positions.
The first is a person who has received a call, a letter, or a knock on the door from the police in connection with a förundersökning, a preliminary investigation into a suspected economic offence. The letter may describe the person as a misstänkt, a suspect, or as a vittne, a witness. The two roles carry different rights and different risks, and confusing them at the outset is one of the more expensive mistakes a person in this position can make.
The second is a company officer, typically someone with signing authority over the accounts, where the suspicion concerns bokföringsbrott or a related accounting offence. Where the same underlying facts point to financial distress, the board may separately need to work out whether a kontrollbalansräkning obligation has already been triggered, and the two questions are usually assessed together rather than in sequence.
The third is a foreign parent company whose Swedish subsidiary has been searched, whose local managing director has been named as a suspect, or whose compliance function needs to work out how much exposure follows once a matter becomes public. Foreign ownership does not change the substance of Swedish criminal procedure, but it changes who needs to be told, how quickly, and in what language.
What the law says
Sweden's economic crime framework is not contained in a single statute. It sits across the Criminal Code's provisions on fraud, breach of trust, and accounting offences, sanctions and market abuse legislation, tax offence rules, and the procedural code governing pre-trial investigations, custody decisions, and the prosecutor's decision to charge, under Swedish law as it currently stands.
The offence categories that recur most often in this practice are fraud, trolöshet mot huvudman (breach of trust against a principal), skattebrott (tax offences), insiderbrott and other market abuse offences, penningtvätt (money laundering), and bokföringsbrott, the accounting offence that arises when a company's records fail to give an adequate account of its business, its finances, or its results. Bokföringsbrott is charged against the individual who was responsible for the bookkeeping, not against the company as such, which is why company officers are drawn into these matters even where they had no personal financial interest in the outcome.
Where the conduct under suspicion touches a foreign parent, a foreign bank account, or evidence held abroad, mutual legal assistance requests and cross-border evidence gathering change the practical timeline and, in some cases, change which authority is actually driving the investigation. A matter that looks purely domestic on the charge sheet can still depend on documents or testimony that sit outside Swedish jurisdiction, and that dependency is worth identifying early rather than discovering it once a request has already been sent.
How it works in practice
What economic crime defence covers
The practice covers the full span of a matter: advice at the point of first police contact, representation during questioning, review of seized material, engagement with the prosecutor during the investigation, the decision on whether to accept a summary fine or contest a charge, and trial representation where the matter proceeds that far. It also covers the corporate-law questions that tend to sit alongside a criminal investigation: board duties, disclosure obligations, and, where the company is also under financial pressure, the separate question of whether a capital-deficiency process has been triggered.
Being contacted as a suspect or as a witness
The single most consequential early decision in this area is understanding which role a person has been given, because the two carry different rights. A suspect has the right to remain silent and the right to counsel before answering substantive questions. A witness has neither of those protections in the same form, but a witness statement can still be used against the person who gave it if their status later changes. Anyone contacted by the police in either capacity should establish, in writing if possible, which status they have been given before the first interview takes place, not after.
The investigation stage
During the förundersökning, the prosecutor and the police gather evidence, which can include document seizure, interviews, and requests to banks or foreign authorities. The suspect's counsel has a right to review material as the investigation proceeds, though the scope of that access can be restricted while the investigation is live. This stage is where most of the factual record that later decisions rest on is actually built, which makes it the stage where early, careful engagement pays off rather than the stage to treat as a formality before the "real" decision.
The prosecution decision
Once the investigation is complete, the prosecutor decides whether to bring charges, offer a summary fine for a minor matter, or discontinue the case. This decision is where most matters are actually resolved, not at trial. The strength of the case the defence has built during the investigation, rather than at the point charges are filed, is usually what determines which of these three outcomes follows.
Fixed-price products versus hourly billing
Work at each of these stages is sold as a defined, fixed-price product rather than billed by the hour. A person facing a first police interview buys the product that covers preparation for and representation at that interview. A company facing an investigation into its accounts buys a different product, scoped to the review and advisory work that stage requires. The price attaches to the stage and its defined scope, not to the number of hours a matter happens to take, which means the client knows the cost of the next step before instructing anyone to take it.
What a fixed-price product includes
Each product is scoped in advance: what documents are reviewed, how many meetings or interview sessions are covered, and what the deliverable is, whether that is a written position, attendance at an interview, or a submission to the prosecutor. What a product does not cover is work outside that scope, such as a matter that escalates from a witness interview to a formal suspect status, or a case that moves from the investigation stage to trial. Escalation of that kind triggers a new product for the new stage, priced against its own defined scope, rather than an open-ended extension of the first engagement.
How a matter moves from first contact to resolution
The sequence is consistent even where the substance varies: first contact, an assessment of status and exposure, engagement during the investigation, the prosecutor's charging decision, and, in the minority of cases that proceed that far, trial. What varies between matters is not the sequence but which decision points carry the most risk. In an accounting-offence matter, the investigation stage tends to be decisive, because the state of the records is largely fixed by the time the police become involved. In a fraud or breach-of-trust matter, the interview stage often carries more weight, because intent, which is usually the contested element, is tested there directly.
What to check before instructing counsel
- The exact status given by the police: suspect or witness, and whether that status is recorded in writing.
- Whether any deadline has been given for a response, a document production, or an interview date.
- Whether the company's accounting records for the relevant period are complete and internally consistent.
- Whether the same facts also raise a corporate-law question, such as a capital-deficiency assessment for the board.
- Whether any part of the evidence, the counterparty, or the company structure sits outside Sweden.
- Whether previous statements have already been given to the police without counsel present.
Questions that come up early
Does a kontrollbalansräkning obligation arise if the company under investigation is also insolvent?
The two questions are separate but often overlap in timing. An economic crime investigation does not itself trigger a capital-deficiency process, but if the underlying facts, missing revenue, disputed liabilities, or a frozen bank account, also point to the company's equity falling below the statutory threshold, the board's kontrollbalansräkning obligation runs on its own clock and does not wait for the criminal matter to resolve.
Do the changes to sanctions and cyber compliance rules affect a matter already underway?
They can, particularly where the underlying suspicion touches payments, counterparties, or data held on systems that fall under updated sanctions or cyber compliance requirements. The practical effect on an open matter depends on which specific obligations changed and when; the current position is set out on the sanctions and cyber compliance changes page rather than repeated here.
What is bokföringsbrott and how does it differ from an ordinary bookkeeping error?
An ordinary error is corrected and does not, on its own, amount to an offence. Bokföringsbrott requires that the failure be serious enough, and often sustained enough, that the records no longer give an adequate account of the business. Whether a given set of errors crosses that line is a factual question that turns on the records themselves, not on the intentions the person responsible says they had.
The numbers
This hub does not carry statutory day-counts or fee figures, because neither is fixed enough to state usefully in the abstract. What can be said is how the pricing structure works: because each product attaches to a stage rather than to time spent, the driver of price is scope, not hours. Scope, in turn, is driven by identifiable factors: how many individuals need to be interviewed or prepared, how many years of accounting records the suspicion covers, whether foreign evidence has to be requested through mutual legal assistance channels, and whether the matter involves one suspected offence or several charged together.
Timing works the same way. How long an investigation takes depends on the workload of the specific prosecutor's office and police unit involved, on whether evidence needs to be requested from abroad, and on how quickly the company or individual under investigation can produce complete records once asked. A matter with clean, complete accounting records and no foreign evidence moves through the investigation stage faster than one where either of those is missing, but neither Lodline nor any other advisor can responsibly attach a number of weeks to that difference before the specific facts are known.
Where it usually goes wrong
The most common error is treating a witness interview as an informal conversation that does not need preparation. A witness statement is recorded, can be read back at trial, and can be used against the person who gave it if their status changes later in the investigation. Silence is not available to a witness in the same way it is to a suspect, but that does not mean every question needs to be answered without thought.
The second is a company officer assuming that because the company, not the individual, appears to be under investigation, personal exposure does not follow. Bokföringsbrott and breach of trust are charged against the individual who held the relevant responsibility, and that responsibility does not transfer automatically to whoever currently holds the title; it attaches to who actually exercised the function at the relevant time.
The third is assuming a fixed-price product covers whatever happens next. A product is scoped to a defined stage. A matter that escalates from a witness interview to formal suspect status, or from an investigation to a charge, moves into a new stage with its own scope and its own product, and treating the first engagement as open-ended leads to disputes about coverage at exactly the point a client can least afford one.
The fourth is missing a parallel corporate-law process running alongside the criminal matter. Financial distress that coincides with an economic crime investigation can trigger obligations that have nothing to do with the criminal charge itself, from a capital-deficiency assessment to, in some restructurings, a forced inlösen of minority shareholdings. Treating the criminal matter as the only clock running is a common and avoidable error.
The fifth is assuming Swedish procedure applies unchanged once a foreign parent, a foreign bank, or foreign evidence enters the picture. Mutual legal assistance requests take their own time, foreign counterparties are not compelled to respond to a Swedish prosecutor the way a domestic party would be, and a foreign parent's own disclosure obligations, in its home jurisdiction, can move on a completely separate timetable from the Swedish criminal process.
What to do next
This hub covers the mechanics of scope, pricing, and sequence. It does not cover a specific set of facts, and that is where self-directed reading stops being useful: whether a given letter from the police names someone as a suspect or a witness, whether a specific set of accounting records crosses the line into bokföringsbrott, and what a particular company's actual exposure is, all depend on documents that have to be reviewed, not summarised.
Anyone who has already been contacted by the police as a suspect or as a witness should start with the product scoped to that specific stage, which covers preparation for and representation at the interview itself. Where the picture is broader, several individuals, a company-level accounting question, or a foreign parent, the next step is an assessment: start an assessment call to work out which stage the matter is actually at and which product fits it.