Back in February, the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime charged former Funcom CEO Trone Arne Aas and three other former company executives with market manipulation and insider trading for their role in what ØKOKRIM characterized as the 2011-2012 “pump and dump” financial scandal. The trial associated with those charges has begun this month, with multiple newspapers reporting that all four men continue to maintain their innocence. When the charges were filed early in 2016, one attorney blamed the investigation on ØKOKRIM activism on the boundaries of Norwegian law.
Trond Arne Aas resigned from his CEO role at Funcom in 2012 on the very same day that The Secret World launched (and underperformed), after which he sold off a significant portion of his stocks, prompting the Norwegian authorities to investigate. In January of 2014, Funcom’s offices were raided by the Norwegian economic crime unit in connection with its securities fraud investigation.
We again clarify that all of those involved in the investigation and trial are former Funcom employees; the modern company is not tangled up in the legal mess. “It will not have any impact on the company, our games, or our players,” the studio told us earlier this year.
