Dean Starkman Serves as Senior Editor for ICIJ’s Ericsson List investigation

CMDS Fellow Dean Starkman served as a senior editor for the latest global investigation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), uncovering how telecom giant Ericsson “dealt with terrorists and financed shady deals in pursuit of profits around the globe.”

ICIJ, together with 30 media partners in 22 countries, investigated leaked Ericsson documents that detail alleged corrupt practices in 15 countries, including in Iraq where the Swedish telecom giant may have made payments to ISIS, ICIJ says on its website. The company “depended on bribery, fraud and other corrupt business practices in pursuit of profits in war-torn Iraq and beyond.”

The world is riveted on Ukraine, as it should be. Meanwhile, the work of exposing wrongdoing and holding power to account goes on. In the Ericsson List, ICIJ and its partners expose a major Western multinational - one critical in the West’s fight for control of the future of telecommunications with authoritarian China - engaged in dealings with the brutal terrorists of the Islamic State amid a years-long bribery spree in Iraq. The project also raises new questions about the U.S. Justice Department’s handling of corporate crime, which is also a subject of the probe. I hope the Ericsson List will be seen as a part of a larger fight for the rule of law, liberal institutions and democracy itself, all now on the line in Ukraine,

Dean Starkman said.