The Swedish Sportdiving Federation filed a police complaint this week against individuals suspected of providing the media with information about the Swedish Sportdiving Federation’s financial policy and transactions.
The leaked documents disclosed that the Federation financially remunerated both the Chairman and Vice Chairman in 2019. Henrik Johansson, the head of the underwater sports in Sweden, received 83 days of compensation payment between December 2018 and August 2019. The amount totaled 112,500 kronor (10,862 euro). Vice Chairman Annikki Wahlöö received 18,000 kronor (1,738 euro) for 13 days.
Payment of salary or wages to the board members of nonprofits is perfectly legal. In fact, in Sweden there has been a steady trend towards remuneration. However, critics are concerned that this undermines the Swedish tradition of volunteer labor in sport associations. If financial gain becomes too important as a motivator, sports may decline. Physical inactivity is a growing problem in Sweden; the overwhelming majority of sports have been losing participants in recent years.
In 2017, SSDF suffered an operating loss of 440,000 kronor on gross revenue of around 5.4m kronor. It was the second year in a row that the underwater federation was in the red. At the 2018 board meeting in Stockholm, Leandra Caldarulo of Felix Diving Club moved that the board of directors collectively draw up a sound economic development plan. She also requested that the board investigate why the federation had failed to execute its previously agreed upon economic strategy successfully. Her motions were approved.
“No financial compensation goes to those on the Swedish Sportdiving Federation’s Board of Directors,”
—Henrik Johansson,
Chairman Swedish Sportdiving Federation,
2016 news brief
Asked to clarify how and when he changed his position, Johansson replied:
“I have worked voluntarily without pay from the federation for 10 years and I continue to do so even now. Those times that someone [on the board] has received compensation for lost income is caused by more time demanding tasks that could not be done on a voluntary basis.”
The position of the Swedish Sport Confederation
Much of SSDF funding comes from the Swedish Sport Confederation. Peter Eriksson, Business Controller at the Confederation said there are no specific guidelines regarding financial compensation to board members. He elaborated:
“Historically very few of our sport federations have given compensation beyond compensating board members for expenses like lodging, meals and other expenses directly attached to the board mission.”
He noted that the Swedish football and ice hockey federations paid the chairmen something similar to a normal wage.
“My view is that the small or middle sized sports and federations seldom have any compensation beyond normal expenses. And in those cases the compensation is most likely shown in the annual report.”
The last published annual report of SSDF (2016 and 2017) does not mention compensation to the board members.
Compliance with the 2018 plan
At the same meeting 6 board members were elected. Subsequently, three of them resigned before their term of office expired. Their departure concentrated financial authority in the hands of Chairman Henrik Johansson and General Secretary Frida Linderoth. This shift in authority from the board to the Chairman and General Secretary has been noted in SSDF’s Annual report 2018-2019. The report, which has been released internally to diving club leaders in pdf format, does not yet provide the financial results.
The organization’s reformed procedures for oversight are outlined in a single paragraph, which can be broken down as follows:
“The expenses of the Federation Chairman are reviewed by the office for final approval by the Financial Committee (ekonomigruppen) at its convention.”
In other words, Johansson informs Linderoth what expenses he expects to spend on behalf of the federation. She grants (or denies) initial approval. When the Financial Committee meets it makes a final determination whether or not to accept the Chairman’s decisions. The paragraph does not discuss how often the Committee meets or who heads it. There is no discussion of procedure in the event of a rejected expenditure.
“The expenses for the Board Members are overseen by the office and subject to approval by the Chairman.”
This seems to contradict the resolution of 2018 to have the Board plan collectively.
“Salaries have been determined by an external financial consultant and approved by the Chairman.”
Thus, some of the most significant costs for running SSDF, employee salaries and the Chairman’s expenditures, are not first hand determined by the Board of Directors collectively, but by the Chairman, General Secretary and outside consultants.
Johansson declined to name the head of the Financial Committee to the media.
“The Federation has an accountant, nominating committee and an annual general meeting of members that oversee the organization and enjoy complete insight,” he said.
The receipts
Johansson used an SSDF Visa Business card. The total charges in 2019 amounted to 129,528 kronor (12,630 euro). He traveled over 30,000km for which he was compensated over 70,000 kronor (6,825 euro) at the standard rate of 18.50kr per 10km. While working for SSDF, Johansson submitted various unremarkable receipts from hotels and restaurants. But there were also receipts that one would expect an auditor to question. For example, there were a few substantial grocery shopping receipts from a local supermarket in his hometown. The three largest together totaled 6,733 kronor (656 euro). Each comprised a wide variety of food products:
Cucumbers Sweden 2
Yeast 50 grams 2
Meatballs 2 x 450 grams
Steakhouse fries 2 x 900 grams
Carraway ground 38 grams
Pearl sugar 500 grams
Smoked reindeer meat and cheese spread
Cinnamon ground 42 grams
Onions
Etc.
When questioned about the purpose of the food purchases, Johansson responded that it was clear the SSDF had suffered a serious breach of confidentiality. Subsequently, the Federation announced that it had filed a police complaint. After that he declined to further discuss financial matters.
In Chairman’s hometown Arne Cronvall, the Vice Chairman of the Örebro Sportdiving Club said that Johansson had indeed provided hotdogs for a “try diving” program to reach underprivileged youth in Örebro. There were grocery receipts with hotdogs that matched such use of federation funds. When pressed for confirmation that the large grocery purchases might have gone to his club, he said that he would check and reply later.
There were other curious receipts: a payment of 1,435 kronor went to Nidingbane, a historical warfare weapons and clothing store in Örebro.
There was a 644 kronor purchase in serieZonen, a comic bookstore in Uppsala.
Re-election
At the end of September SSDF will convene its bi-annual meeting at which time members will have and opportunity to request explanations from Johansson, regarding his stewardship of underwater sports.
During the past two years Johansson has carried out some important reforms. He successfully introduced an annual competition fee of 300 kronor per athlete. This may have helped to stabilize the federation’s finances, but he was unable to increase the number of clubs by 10, which was the goal the board set.
Some 20 inactive clubs have been removed. The clean up is important to prevent auditing by the Swedish Sport Confederation, which is getting stricter about inflated numbers from its members.
In 2020, the Competitive Freediving Committee has a budget from SSDF of 153,600 kronor, which is an improvement over a turbulent period for freediving during which the Committee was even disbanded.
Has Johansson done enough to win re-election come autumn? CMAS member federations tend to stick with established leaders, regardless of controversies. The challenge to SSDF, like many other sports in Sweden, is to engage youth and keep a larger number of seniors playing rugby, scuba and freediving.