Swedish e-commerce startup's execs linked to NYC sex crime

Two Swedish nationals with the same names as top executives of e-commerce startup Klarna were arrested on Saturday in New York and charged with criminal sexual abuse.

Niklas Adalberth and Jens Saltin were arrested on charges that they attacked a 19-year old woman at the W Hotel, the New York Post reported. Techcrunch.com linked the names to, respectively, the co-founder/COO and Netherlands country manager of the Swedish electronic payments company.

Both men were released on US$10,000 bail and are due back in court on Friday, according to the New York state court system's website, which notes that the men were arrested shortly before 10:30 p.m.

Court documents allege that Adalberth, 30, held the victim down while he and Saltin, 31, took off her clothes and Adalberth fondled her breast.

A Klarna media relations representative in the U.S. did not respond to requests for information.

Klarna was founded in 2005 by Adalberth and two friends from the Stockholm School of Economics, according to its website. It now has more than 600 employees and handles payments for more than 14,000 merchants, according to a December 2011 press release. It operates in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Israel in addition to Sweden.

U.S. venture capital firm Sequoia Capital is a major investor in Klarna.

(Joab Jackson in New York contributed to this story.)

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