CW+ Premium Content/CW Nordics

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI/ Keskusrikospoliisi) has closed its investigation into a blackmail of Nokia in 2007, when extortionists claimed to have acquired the digital encryption key for the company’s Symbian operating system. In just over a decade of investigation, no motive for the alleged crime was ever found or any arrest made. The targeting of Nokia by unknown extortionists in October 2007 remains a particularly painful event in the Finnish mobile technology company’s history. Even today, Nokia’s top management would rather forget than re-live the incident, which caused widespread internal panic at a time when the company was at the peak of its international powers. The €2m blackmail had been buried deep within the corporation’s memory vaults until April of this year, when the famously unsolved ransom demand – known within Nokia as Operation Polarbear – re-entered the limelight with the NBI officially declaring the case closed after a prolonged and unfruitful investigation. From a global perspective, ...