TheCopenhagenPost
December 18th, 2017

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Pia Allerslev (second right) defended the large severance settlements (photo: Hasse Ferrold)

Five deputy mayors who lost their seats in the last election will collect nearly 4 million kroner in severance pay when they leave office in January.

Several of the outgoing mayors will receive up to a full year’s salary. Venstre’s Pia Allerslev, who will receive over 1 million kroner in severance pay, said that it is in the citizen’s best interest that the outgoing deputy mayors are so well compensated.

“I think it is reasonable for outgoing mayors to receive severance pay,” she told DR Nyheder.

“Citizens are not well-served by mayors seeking jobs during their term of office.”

Allerslev said that the severance pay is in accordance with current legislation.

Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager going after IKEA
Margrethe Vestager, in her role as EU competition commissioner, plans to announce an official probe into furniture retailer IKEA’s tax arrangements, which have allegedly helped the company avoid paying nearly a billion euros in EU taxes from 2009 to 2014. The Swedish retailer created two separate corporate groups within a web of companies in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, through which they moved money and profits to take advantage of special tax schemes, according to published reports. The investigation into IKEA is Vestager’s most recent probe into the structures that allow some multinational companies to reduce their tax payments. The investigations are part of a wider European effort to stop tax avoidance. In all investigations to date, officials have ordered four member states to recover billions of euros from nearly 40 companies including Apple, Starbucks, Fiat and Amazon. IKEA has declined to comment on the probe.

Denmark’s national bank warns against investing in Bitcoin
While investors around the world watch the unprecedented rise in value of the digital currency Bitcoin, Lars Rohde, the head of the Danish national bank, is advising caution. “It’s a completely unregulated market,” Rohde told DR Nyheder. “Whether it is worth 50 percent more or 50 percent less next year, no-one can say.” The price of Bitcoin has risen almost 2,000 percent in the past year. When it was invented in 2009, a Bitcoin could be purchased for a kroner. As of today, the price of a single coin has topped 100,000 kroner – a return that established financial markets cannot match. “It’s not a regulated market,” said Rohde. “It is not the responsibility of the authorities. You are completely on your own and cannot complain to us if things go wrong.”

’Tis the season for CEO fraud 
Danish police are warning that the holiday season is the prime time for a type of corporate crime known as CEO fraud. As chief executives and financial officers head off for holiday vacations, scammers and computer hackers send out ‘internal’ emails in the name of the vacationing leaders of business, with credible-looking instructions, often to transfer large amounts of money into accounts controlled by the criminals. “In busy periods, like Christmas and the Christmas holidays, it is easy to get an invoice intended to cheat the company,” Christian Østergaard, a special consultant with South and South Jutland Police, told TV2. “It’s easy to be fooled because criminals are good at imitating the form and content of mail so employees can easily believe the instructions.”

YouSee researching why you couldn’t see them
Telecommunications company YouSee has taken on extra hands to research what caused a crash that hit many of its customers on Sunday at 12:50. Customers could not log on to YouSee’s website or app for over six hours, and some broadband connections are still down. The company could not say when its service will return to normal. The company has ruled out a cyberattack, saying it suspects a problem with a fibre connection. Customer’s were not happy about missing events such as Victor Axelsen’s final match at the Dubai Finals. Others were not able to see the European Championship in swimming from the Royal Arena in Copenhagen. “The only thing that works at YouSee is their invoice-generating machine,” one disgruntled user told Ekstra Bladet. YouSee promised to keep their customers updated via its website.