Page "Datasaab" Paragraph 9

After a series of mergers, the name Datasaab became connected with an incident of illegal technology transfer to the Soviet Union in the late 1970s.

This is summarized in a chapter of the book Techno-Bandits ( 1984 ).

A 1973 bid for tender for a civilian air traffic control system at the airports in Moscow, Kiev, and Mineralnye Vody was won by Swedish supplier Stansaab.

A contract between Stansaab and Aeroflot was signed in September 1975.

However, parts of the delivered system relied on components from the U. S. A., for which the Swedes couldn't get the necessary export licenses.

So they bought U. S. components, relabeled them and smuggled them to Moscow using Soviet diplomats.

In 1978, Stansaab changed its name to Datasaab.

Allegedly the air traffic control system did support the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

The smuggling operation was uncovered in October 1980, known as " the Datasaab affair " ( Datasaabaffären ).

In early 1981, Datasaab was acquired by Ericsson and became its computing division Ericsson Information Systems.

In April 1984 Ericsson was fined US $ 3. 12 million for breach of U. S. export controls, and agreed to pay.