Swedish gangs, which have been increasingly involved in clearing accounts in recent years, are using the Spotify platform to launder dirty money, writes a Swedish newspaper today.

These criminal networks pay for the creation of fake streams, i.e. processes that allow artificially increasing the number of auditions of artists with connections to the gangs, writes Svenska Dagbladet.

These fake streams generate revenue, which the platform pays the beneficiaries, thus allowing the gangs to launder their money.

The newspaper says it is based on statements from four members of different gangs in Stockholm and information from a Swedish police investigator.

“I can say with 100% guarantee that this is going on. I, myself, was involved” in this manipulation, one of those members tells the newspaper, which dates the tactic back to 2019. “We paid people to do this for us systematically”. As he stated, the gangs convert their dirty money into cryptocurrencies that are used to pay people who create fake streams.

The newspaper writes that in the country one million streams generate from 40,000 to 60,000 Swedish kroner (3,300-5,000 euros).

The police investigator cited by the newspaper says he contacted Spotify about the matter in 2021, but the company never responded. “Spotify has become a cash machine for gangs,” he says.

The world’s number one music streaming platform said it was doing everything it could to combat fake streams and said it was “an industry-wide challenge”.

“Less than 1% of all streams were detected as artificial and quickly deleted before any payment,” Spotify said in a message to AFP, clarifying that it had not received any knowledge of the police contact.

Sweden has been trying for several years to stop a war of gangs vying to control the arms and drug trade with shootings and bomb attacks.