Haldex reports suspected corporate espionage and data breach to the police

Haldex has filed a police report due to suspected corporate espionage and data breaches. This is after the company discovered that a former employee copied large amounts of digital information, mainly of financial nature, from the company's servers. There is also evidence that information has been passed on to at least one senior employee in the financial industry.

“The potential information value in each separate of the copied files is limited. However, given the large number of documents downloaded, we cannot exclude that the potential spreading of all files together may have led to the disclosure of insider information.”, says Jörgen Durban. “Therefore, Swedish Economic Crime Authority is involved in the case.”

It was earlier this summer that Haldex discovered that a person who no longer worked for the company had entered the company's servers and downloaded a large amount of files with information that includes corporate secrets of a primarily financial nature.

In the further investigation, Haldex also found that the former employee relayed some of this confidential information to a senior employee in the financial industry.

“It is no secret that Haldex has a complicated ownership structure where changes are to be expected and if the police investigation reveals that a financial actor has actually used illegal methods to obtain information in order to gain benefits is, to say the least, worrying”, continues Jörgen Durban.

The company has also informed the Stockholm stock exchange monitoring unit of what has happened, as there is a risk that the information may be used incorrectly.

“It is very serious when corporate secrets concerning a listed company are handled in an unauthorized manner. This risks, among other things, disrupting the conditions for a smoothly functioning stock market, which is something that I presume all serious players would distance themselves from”, says Jörgen Durban.

Since the data breach was found, the company has changed the protection practices regarding digital material.