Fingerprint Cards requests investigation over alleged court disclosure of trade secrets

A Swedish Prosecutor may have revealed Fingerprint Cards’ trade secrets during a court hearing over an alleged case of insider trading involving former executives with the biometric sensor-maker dating back to 2016, and a preliminary investigation is now under way, as reported by Dagens Juridic and translated by Google.

Johan Carlström is Fingerprint Cards’ largest shareholder and chairman of its Board of Directors. Carlström was arrested while serving as CEO, along with former board member Lars Söderfjell, in early-2017 after Sweden’s financial crime authority noticed large volumes of shares were traded immediately before a profit warning. The executives have entered not-guilty pleas.

During late-April hearings before a Stockholm District Court, five pages of information previously acknowledged by the court to be trade secrets was presented by a prosecutor, prompting a compliant from Fingerprint Cards representatives.

Carlström’s representatives say the incident calls into question the objectivity of the prosecutor.

A statement from the Economic Crime Authority has since declared that the prosecutor is not disqualified from continuing in the case, which will continue.

The Economic Crime Authority is now weighing criminal charges, which Fingerprint Cards argue should be considered.

Prosecutor Jonas Myrdal says the disclosure of trade secrets was an innocent mistake, and accepted personal responsibility.

Myrdal also expressed doubt about the severity of the infraction, saying that the information he allegedly disclosed may not constitute trade secrets. Specifically, the information refers to a 2013 meeting, when the biometrics industry and the company were both in their infancy. As such, Myrdal says they reflect fundamentally different circumstances from those present in the market today.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Fingerprint Cards  |  fingerprint sensors  |  stocks