A company suspected of cheating on its taxes was hired by the Swedish tax authorities to deliver presents to its employees.
Christmas presents worth a combined total of five million kronor were due to be sent out to some 12,000 employees of the country's tax and enforcement agencies when management learned that something was amiss.
Staff at the tax crimes unit remembered the company's name from an earlier investigation that led to a prosecution.
"This is not good at all. There is absolutely no way we should hire anybody who has made decisions that could give rise to tax offences," tax auditor Susanne Landin, who led the investigation into the alleged offences, told Dagens Industri.
"We have cancelled the business agreement we had with the company," tax office spokesman Sten Eriksson told newspaper Smålandsposten.