Obol Investment was an apparent Swedish company involved in fund managing and sponsoring sport events. In 2006, it signed a 15-year sponsorship deal with the

Swedish Basketball Federation The Swedish Basketball Federation ( sv, Svenska Basketbollförbundet) also known as SBBF is the governing body of basketball in Sweden. It was established on 25 October 1952 out of the Swedish Handball Federation's basketball section, which had b ...

that resulted in the renaming of ''Basketligan'' ("the Basketball league") to

Obol Basketball League Svenska Basketligan, or the Swedish Basketball League (SBL), is the premier league for professional basketball in Sweden. The league was originally established in 1992 as Basketligan and was known as that prior to the season of 2006–07, but whe ...

. It was later revealed by independently working journalists a
Norrbottens-Kuriren
and

Sveriges Radio Sveriges Radio AB (, "Sweden's Radio") is Sweden's national publicly funded radio broadcaster. Sveriges Radio is a public limited company, owned by an independent foundation, previously funded through a licensing fee, the level of which is d ...

's ''Kaliber'', an

investigative journalism Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years rese ...

program, that the company did not have a permits to conduct business in Sweden and that the company seemed to have no traceable fund assets. Or at least not in the amounts claimed by the company spokespersons ($1-15 billion

US Dollars The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from Dollar, other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American ...

The Obol affair

According to

Radio Sweden Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

's domestic program ''Kaliber'' on 3 December 2006, the company "Obol Investment" doesn't exist, and doesn't have the necessary permits to manage funds in Sweden, Switzerland or any other country. It was also revealed that the focal point of Obol, the charismatic entrepreneur Bo Johansson (born 1962 in Malmberget), had been supplying false information about the circumstances of his own upbringing as well as the origins of Obol itself. Johansson claimed that he was orphaned when he was only 16 when his parents actually died a few years apart in his mid 20s. The founder and owner of Obol, an Englishman known as "Sir Brownleigh". Obol has been marketed as a highly internationalized business with vast sums (up to 15 billion US dollars) in investment funds, about which there seems to be no public information. Despite this, the company's website is hosted from a server in

Köping ''Köping'' was a Swedish denomination for a market town since the Middle Ages, derived from the Old Norse word ''kaupang''. The designation was officially abolished with the municipal reform of 1971, when Sweden was subdivided into the Munici ...

, Sweden. In press releases on their webpage from 4-9 December 2006, Obol Investment's two main representatives, Bo Johansson and Jan Saradlic, denounced the criticism in the media as a "journalistic frontal attack", "a nightmare" and "a mass hunt/slaughter of Obol", as well as stating that they are looking into possibilities of suing for

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

. "Rightful and appropriate" criticism about withholding of information has been admitted, however, and all investments in the Obol Investment Concept fund were to be repaid. As of 12 January 2007, Obol had repeatedly avoided attending meetings with Finansinspektionen, the agency charged with supervising the Swedish financial market, to clear up any suspicions of illegal activities. Finansinspektionen is currently conducting an investigation whether Obol and its owners have been pursuing business ventures that would require permits. Bo Johansson returned to Sweden in 2019 under a different last name. He claims that a member of the company tasked with returning funds to investors sent it to a relative in Croatia.

References

*
Kaliber

'', 2006-12-03, Retrieved 12 January 2007. (in Swedish) *
Inga besked från mystiska Obol

Dagens Nyheter ''Dagens Nyheter'' (, ), abbreviated ''DN'', is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It is published in Stockholm and aspires to full national and international coverage, and is widely considered Sweden's newspaper of record. History and profile ''Da ...

'', 2007-01-10, Retrieved 12 January 2007. (in Swedish) *
Obol blåste Finansinspektionen igen

'', 2007-01-12, Retrieved 12 January 2007. (in Swedish)

External links

Obol Investment
{{Use dmy dates, date=July 2020 Investment companies of Sweden