Allegedly, it paid bribes to public officials to obtain licences for its subsidiary, Azercell, but prosecutors said they couldn’t prove their claims.

This, though, still leaves Telia, and other companies, entangled in an investigation linked to corruption in Uzbekistan, where they allegedly paid hundreds of millions of US dollars to obtain licences.

The beneficiary of the bribes is said to be Gulnara Karimova, the once-extravagant eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

VimpelCom, an Amsterdam- based Russian company, has already settled its Uzbek bribery case with US and Dutch courts by paying a penalty of $795m, effectively admitting wrongdoing.

The Uzbek case had negative repercussions across Scandinavia.

In Sweden, perhaps in an effort to erase recent memories, TeliaSonera changed its name, colours and branding and is now registered as Telia Company.

In Norway, heads started rolling last year at the state-owned telecoms company Telenor, which owns 33% in VimpelCom.

CEO Svein Aaser was sacked in November and the Norwegian former CEO of VimpelCom Jo Lunder was arrested a few days later.

Last autumn, both Telia and Telenor said they wanted out of their operations in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, allegedly because of market pressures, but their exit, rebranding and apologies can only really be read as last minute attempts to pull their hands out of the cookie jar.

Scrapping the investigation also ditches a potentially embarrassing public hearing for Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family into their personal affairs. TeliaSonera was alleged to have paid millions of dollars indirectly to Mr Aliyev and his family for access to Azerbaijan in 2008.

Prosecutors said they could neither prove the bribery allegations nor Telia’s intent.

Allegations of the payment emerged in mid-2014, nearly two years after TeliaSonera was accused of paying a $375 million bribe to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, for access to Uzbekistan.

“With the tools we have at our disposal, we can’t prove bribery,” Gunnar Stetler, Sweden’s prosecutor, told Reuters in an interview.

Telia said the ruling marked another departure from the company’s more murky past.

“After today’s decision, there are no ongoing Swedish investigations that relate to Telia Company, except for the investigation regarding Uzbekistan,” Telia said in a statement.

Telia is linked to investigations in Sweden, the Netherlands, the US, Switzerland and Norway into alleged corruption linked to Ucell, its subsidiary in Uzbekistan.

Last September, Telia said it wanted to sell off its assets in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Turkish telecoms company Turkcell, in which Telia owns a stake, said it was interested in buying some of these companies.