Jail for scandal-hit Skandia boss

A former chief executive at the heart of Sweden’s biggest ever corporate scandal has been jailed for two years.

Lars-Eric Petersson was convicted of handing out 156m Swedish kronor ($21.5m; £11.4m) in bonuses to managers without permisison from the board.

He had scrapped limits on payments to senior staff at Skandia, Sweden’s largest insurance company.

A Stockholm court cleared Petersson, of adding 37m kronor to his retirement plan without authorisation.

An investigation concluded the actions of some senior managers had been “unsuitable, unethical and in some cases probably illegal”.

Petersson and the rest of the firm’s top executives were sacked in 2003 after the scandal broke.

It enraged the public in Sweden, a country notorious for heavily taxing high earners.

Skandia was last year bought out in a hostile takeover by South Africa’s Old Mutual, a rival insurer,

Petersson’s lawyer said he would appeal the conviction.