In recent years two Swedish companies, Telia and Lundin Petroleum, have had to work hard to legitimate their actions as a result of allegations of criminal activity. In this paper, the corporate framings employed to deal with allegations of crime will be analysed on the basis of Stanley Cohen’s (2009) theoretical work on processes of denial and neutralization techniques. More specifically, the paper focuses on the temporalization of neutralizations of corporate crime and aims to answer the following questions: How have the corporations’ defence mechanisms changed over time? How might the types of crime of which they have been accused, and their corporate structures, affect the ways in which particular defence mechanisms are employed? The analysis demonstrates that although there are similarities, such as both companies framing their businesses as contributing to the development of democracy, human rights, prosperity and peace, the companies follow two different lines of development in their defences. While Telia moves from literal denial to confession, Lundin Petroleum stays with its literal denial in parallel with a strong condemnation of the condemners. These differences seem to be grounded both in the crimes of which the companies have been accused and their respective corporate structures.

Introduction

In recent years two Swedish companies, Telia and Lundin Petroleum, have had to work hard to legitimate their actions as a result of allegations of criminal activity. The telecommunications provider Telia’s1 dealings in Central Asia, and in Uzbekistan in particular, have attracted a substantial amount of media attention and criminal investigations both in Sweden and abroad. In 2012, the so-called “Uzbekistan affair” was uncovered, resulting in criminal charges against the former CEO and two other senior officials for their involvement in the company’s bribery scheme, and in legal proceedings against the company in Sweden for a disgorgement (i.e. giving up illegally gained profits) and a global settlement in which Telia agreed to pay $965 million to resolve charges relating to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The Swedish government is the company’s principal shareholder with almost 40 percent of the company’s shares. Lundin Petroleum was awarded a contract for Block 5A in southern Sudan in early 1997, and ever since that time the company’s operations have faced allegations of participating in crimes against humanity. A report entitled “Unpaid Debt”, written by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (ECOS),2 led to the initiation of an ongoing police investigation in Sweden into violations of international law. The Lundin family are the largest shareholder in the business, with 30 percent of the company’s shares. As a result of these allegations, the two companies have for more than a decade been faced with a need for ‘crisis management’ in order to legitimate themselves and their business in relation to public opinion, the media and their shareholders. Corporate selfdefences, which belong to a broader category of offenders’ neutralizations and denials, constitute a form of speech acts known as accounts (Scott and Lyman, 1968) that are employed when someone has to explain a gap between actions and expectations.