Tax offences and the parallel tax case: what to do in the first ten days is decided largely by what happens before either the tax file or the criminal file settles into a fixed position. When Skatteverket, the Swedish Tax Agency, refers a case for suspected tax offences while its own reassessment is still open, the company or individual involved is running two processes at once, on different clocks, with different rules of evidence. The choices made early determine how much room is left to manage both.
Who this concerns
This situation arises for companies and individuals who receive a reassessment decision, or notice of an ongoing audit, from Skatteverket, and who are then told, at the same time or shortly after, that the matter has been referred to Ekobrottsmyndigheten, the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, for a criminal assessment. It also arises where a company director, CFO, or accountant is named personally, separately from the company, once the audit crosses from a tax adjustment into a suspicion of deliberate misstatement.
The trigger is rarely a single dramatic event. More often it is a letter requesting further documentation that reads differently from the previous one, a request to attend a meeting "to clarify" figures already submitted, or a notice that a matter has been forwarded internally within Skatteverket for a criminal assessment before any formal charge exists. By the time the referral is confirmed in writing, the tax file and the criminal file are already moving on separate but overlapping tracks, and statements made in one can surface in the other.
What the law says
Under Swedish law as it currently stands, the tax reassessment process and the criminal process for tax offences are handled by different authorities, on different procedural rules, and are not required to reach the same conclusion at the same time. Skatteverket can raise, reduce, or withdraw a tax assessment independently of whatever Ekobrottsmyndigheten decides about criminal liability, and a criminal acquittal does not automatically reverse a tax reassessment, nor does a confirmed reassessment automatically prove criminal intent.
What connects the two files is the underlying documentation and, more importantly, what is said about it. Explanations given to a Skatteverket case officer to resolve the tax question are not protected from later use in a criminal investigation. A statement made informally, without legal representation present, to "sort out" a discrepancy can become the single most damaging piece of evidence in the criminal file, precisely because it was not given as a formal suspect interview and therefore was not approached with the same care.
Where the company, a parent entity, or relevant assets sit outside Sweden, both tracks change shape. Skatteverket can draw on EU and international exchange-of-information arrangements to obtain records from other tax administrations, which extends how far back and how wide the tax file can reach. On the criminal side, evidence held abroad, whether bank records, supplier contracts, or witness statements from staff of a foreign parent, typically requires a mutual legal assistance request, which slows Ekobrottsmyndigheten's own timeline but does not remove the exposure. A foreign parent company that instructs local management to "just answer Skatteverket's questions directly" without first mapping what has already been referred criminally is a recurring source of avoidable damage.
How it works in practice
The first signal that the file has split
The clearest marker that a tax matter has become a parallel case is language shift: requests that previously asked for documentation now ask for an explanation of intent, timing, or knowledge. A request to explain "why" a deduction was taken, rather than simply to substantiate it with receipts, is usually the point at which the file has already been read with a criminal referral in mind, even if no referral has been confirmed yet.
What happens inside the first ten days
In the days immediately after learning that a criminal referral exists or is under consideration, three things typically happen without anyone deciding they should: the company continues answering Skatteverket's questions as if nothing has changed, an employee or director gives an informal account of events to "help clarify" the position, and internal documents continue to be created, amended, or discussed by email as though the matter were still a routine audit. Each of these narrows the room to manoeuvre later. None of them is required by law within any fixed number of days; the window matters because it is the period before positions, statements, and internal narratives set into a form that is difficult to revise.
The first move that cannot be undone
The single most consequential early action is usually a spoken or written explanation given directly to Skatteverket, or to Ekobrottsmyndigheten informally, before legal representation has reviewed what is already in the file. Once a specific account of intent has been given, whether "we thought this was deductible" or "the invoice was for services actually rendered", that account becomes the baseline against which every later document is measured. Correcting it afterwards reads as a change of story, even when the correction is accurate.
Deciding who speaks for the company
Where both the company and a named individual, typically a director or the person who signed the relevant tax returns, are exposed, their interests are not automatically aligned. The company may have an interest in demonstrating that an error was administrative and isolated; the individual may need to show that the decision reflected instructions from above, or reasonable reliance on external advice. A single lawyer representing both risks a conflict that surfaces only once the two accounts diverge, at which point withdrawing and instructing separate representation costs more time than it would have cost to separate them from day one.
Running the tax file without feeding the criminal file
Skatteverket's own process does not pause because a criminal referral exists, and deadlines to respond to reassessment notices, appeal decisions, or provide further documentation continue to run. The practical task is to keep responding to the tax file in a way that is accurate and complete without volunteering explanations of intent that belong in the criminal file, and without assuming that whatever satisfies a tax case officer will also satisfy a criminal investigator working from the same paperwork with a different question in mind.
Suspect status versus witness status
A person questioned in connection with the criminal file is either treated as a suspect, with corresponding rights including the right not to answer, or as a witness, with different obligations. The distinction is not always made explicit at the outset of a conversation, and the practical position for anyone unsure which status applies, and what that changes about what should or should not be said, is covered separately: see questioning as suspect or witness.
What to check in the first ten days
- Whether the letter or communication received is from Skatteverket's tax function, from Ekobrottsmyndigheten, or both, and what each is formally asking for.
- Whether any deadline to respond, appeal, or submit documentation to Skatteverket is running, and when it falls.
- Whether any individual, separately from the company, has been named or contacted directly.
- Whether anyone inside the company has already given an informal explanation, in writing or verbally, and to whom.
- Whether documents relevant to the audit period are still being created, edited, or discussed internally.
- Whether the company, a parent entity, or key evidence sits outside Sweden, and if so, which authority holds it.
- Whether existing legal representation, if any, is instructed for the tax matter, the criminal matter, or both.
Frequently asked questions
Does a parallel tax case trigger sanctions screening on counterparties?
Not automatically. A tax referral concerns the company's own filings, not its counterparties' status under restrictive measures. However, where the underlying transactions involved counterparties later flagged in a separate compliance review, the two issues can surface together during document collection. Screening exposure and tax exposure remain distinct questions and are assessed separately: see sanctions screening of counterparties.
What happens if relevant assets sit with a debtor abroad while the tax case runs?
A parallel tax case does not by itself change how a foreign debtor's assets are located or secured; that remains a separate enforcement question governed by where the assets sit and what recognition route applies there. Where a tax claim later needs to be enforced against foreign assets, the practical steps mirror those for any cross-border claim: see asset tracing against a debtor abroad.
Where does a tax claim rank against other creditors seeking attachment?
Ranking depends on the type of claim, whether attachment has already been granted to other creditors, and the general priority rules that apply to competing claims against the same assets, not on whether a criminal referral exists alongside the tax claim. The mechanics of priority among creditors are addressed on their own terms: see priority among creditors in attachment.
The numbers
There is no statutory ten-day deadline in either the tax reassessment process or the criminal procedure; the emphasis on the early period reflects how quickly informal explanations, internal emails, and unrepresented conversations with case officers accumulate, not a fixed legal cut-off. Any specific deadline to respond to a Skatteverket notice, appeal a reassessment, or attend a scheduled meeting is stated in the letter received and should be read directly from that document rather than assumed from general practice.
Cost in this situation is driven by how many tax years are under review, whether records need to be gathered from a foreign parent or counterparty, and whether Ekobrottsmyndigheten has opened, or is likely to open, a formal investigation rather than a preliminary assessment. None of these can be priced from a general description; the shape of the work depends on what the audit file, once read in full, actually contains.
Where it usually goes wrong
The most common error is treating the tax file and the criminal file as one problem with one answer. An explanation that satisfies Skatteverket's case officer, because it resolves the numbers, can simultaneously hand the criminal investigator a clean account of intent that is difficult to walk back. The reverse also happens: an account built to protect the individual's criminal position can undermine the company's ability to argue, on the tax side, that the error was administrative rather than deliberate.
A second recurring failure is assuming that because the tax reassessment was settled, reduced, or dropped, the criminal exposure disappears with it. The two decisions are not bound together, and a settled tax position is sometimes read by a criminal investigator as confirmation that the underlying facts are no longer contested, which can work against the person still facing the criminal question.
A third failure is instructing the same lawyer for the company and for a named individual director without first checking whether their accounts might diverge. This is manageable at the outset and becomes expensive precisely at the point where it matters most, once the two positions start to differ and separate representation has to be found mid-process.
Where the company or key evidence sits outside Sweden, a further failure is assuming that a foreign parent's own compliance or legal team can handle the Swedish side directly. Swedish procedure, Swedish evidentiary rules, and the specific relationship between Skatteverket and Ekobrottsmyndigheten do not transfer from a foreign playbook, and instructions given by a parent without local input often generate exactly the kind of informal statement that later damages the case.
None of this means the position is unmanageable. It means the first ten days are for establishing which file is which, what has already been said, and who needs separate representation, not for producing an explanation that is meant to close the matter.
What to do next
This material stops at the point where the actual audit file, the specific wording of any Skatteverket notice, and whatever has already been said internally need to be read line by line against each other, which is not something a general description can substitute for. This falls within economic crime defence work generally, and it sits alongside situations that begin the same way: if a search of the company's premises has already taken place, or is anticipated, that specific sequence is covered separately: see a search at company's premises.
Where the position needs to be read against the actual documents received so far, an assessment establishes what the tax file and the criminal file currently look like, what has already been said to either authority, and where separate representation is needed before the next deadline arrives. Contact Lodline through the intake form to arrange that review.