Whistleblowers – market abuse

Please note that whistleblowing is subject to specific regulations. In order to be considered a whistleblower, you need to be linked to the firm through your work, for example as an employee, Board member or consultant. You may also be a whistleblower if you were formerly linked to the firm. 

Your notification must refer to a concrete suspicion that a firm or an individual acted in violation of a regulation that is part of FI’s supervisory responsibility. It must be in the interest of the public that the improprieties be identified.

The firm to which the notification refers must be a listed company. The notification may relate to 

• Insider crime, for example that someone is using insider information to acquire or divest financial instruments
• Market manipulation of a publicly traded financial instrument
• Swindle, for example that person discharging managerial responsibilities in public companies provide an inaccurate or misleading description of the company by providing false information or withholding information that shareholders need to be able to make an accurate assessment of the company. Swindle could also be related to the company providing misleading information or that the company has not provided information about a certain event and that the company has inaccurately published insider information.

Read more about market abuse. 

Would you like to inform FI about regulatory violations on the financial market, but you are not a whistleblower? Learn more about how to share your information with FI. 

How to submit a notification

It is easiest to submit a notification by email or letter, but it is also possible to call FI or book an in-person meeting. 

• Email: visselblasare.mar@fi.se 
• Letter: Send to Finansinspektionen, Box 7821, SE-103 97 Stockholm, Sweden.
• Telephone: Call +46 (0)8 408 986 70 if the notification refers to firms under FI's supervision. Call +46 (0)8 408 986 90 if the notification refers to suspected market abuse. Our telephone hours are Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 9–11 AM. FI does not record telephone conversations. 

Please include in your notification:

• as clear of a description as possible of the observations of work-related improprieties or irregularities,
• the names of the people involved in the observation,
• any documentation of the observation,
• contact details (voluntary).

A detailed description of how whistleblowers should report suspected regulatory violations is provided in the memorandum How to report regulatory violations.

How to use PGP encryption when sending emails

An email encrypted with PGP can only be read by recipients who have a private key that fits the public key used to encrypt the email. Encrypt the entire email, not only the attached files.

In order to use PGP encryption, you must download a PGP app to your computer. FI recommends the commercial PGP app from Symantec.

To send encrypted emails to visselblasare.mar@fi.se, you need to download FI’s key:
Visselblåsaren.mar.zip

Whistleblowers may be anonymous

As a whistleblower, you are entitled to anonymity if you so choose. FI will not require you to identify yourself. 

FI may not investigate who has submitted a notification, obstruct the submission of a notification, or retaliate in any way against the person submitting a notification. If a person has faced retaliatory action as a result of their whistleblowing, they may be entitled to compensation.

The Whistleblowing Act also provides protection in the form of so-called discharge from liability. This means that, as a rule, a whistleblower may not be held responsible for having disregarded a confidentiality obligation. This applies on the condition that the person, at the time the notification was submitted, had reasonable cause to assume that it was necessary to submit the notification to reveal the impropriety. The discharge from liability, however, does not extend to the release of documents.

Confidentiality

FI is a government authority. This means that notifications and documents submitted via the whistleblowing function are considered public documents and may need to be released to the public in accordance with the principle of public access. If you have provided your identity in the notification, as a rule it will be subject to secrecy pursuant to Chapter 17, section 3b and Chapter 32, section 3b of the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act. Information that could reveal the identity of the person submitting the notification, however, may not be released. Information that could reveal the identity of other persons included in the matter may only be revealed if it is clear that this can be done without the individuals experiencing harm or suffering. 

Exceptions from the protection against retaliatory actions

In order to be covered by the act’s protection against retaliatory action, the person submitting the notification must have cause to believe that the information is true at the time of submission. The person submitting the notification may not do so to discredit a person or for personal benefit. A person who submits inaccurate information could be committing a crime.

The protection in the act against retaliatory action also does not apply when reporting protective security-classified information pursuant to the Protective Security Act. This relates to information subject to qualified secrecy to protect national security.