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MINISTER

Swedish ministers profit from Lundin: report

Over half of Sweden’s government ministers have shares in investment funds that put money into Sweden-based oil giant Lundin Petroleum, a new report has revealed, prompting quick action by ministers who claimed they were "unaware" of the finer details of their portfolios.

Published: 13 March 2012 08:05 CET

A review of government ministers’ investment holdings by daily Aftonbladet has revealed that 13 of Sweden’s 24 ministers own shares in funds that finance Lundin Petroleum, which has shaken feathers at the Riksdagen.

Among those involved are prime minister Fredrick Reinfeldt, foreign minister Carl Bildt and EU minister Birgitta Ohlsson.

When confronted with the allegations, Ohlsson claimed she was fully aware of the holdings in her investment portfolio, and acted immediately.

“I have chosen to do my part by selling all of my funds,” she told the paper on Tuesday.

“There are probably many who were unaware of this. It’s about Sweden’s most common funds which own shares in several hundred companies that are continuously being replaced.”

Meanwhile, political scientist Ulf Bjereld argued that politicians have a “moral responsibility” to watch over their own portfolios.

Lundin Petroleum has come under fire on several occasions, notably after they allegedly broke international law with crimes against humanity in South Sudan between 1997 and 2003.

Other ministers have refused to comment on the matter, according to Aftonbladet, and Reinfeldt’s press secretary has stated that he does not believe ministers should comment on their personal portfolios.

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MINISTER

Austrian minister steps down over plagiarism accusations

Austrian minister Christine Aschbacher resigned from her cabinet post in charge of labour, families and youth on Saturday following allegations some of her university work was plagiarised.

Published: 10 January 2021 07:42 CET
Austrian minister steps down over plagiarism accusations
Austrian minister Christine Aschbacher has resigned in the face of plagiarism accusations. Photo: Helmut Fohringer/APA/AFP
A conservative from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's OeVP party, Aschbacher said she had stepped down to “protect my family”, complaining of “hostility, political agitation and attacks… with unbearable force”.
   
Aschbacher's 2006 master's thesis displayed “plagiarism, incorrect quotations and lack of knowledge of the German language”, alleged blogger Stefan Weber, who specialises in sniffing out academic fraud.
   
At the time, she graduated with high marks from the University of Applied Sciences in Wiener Neustadt, south of Austrian capital Vienna.
   
Weber has levelled the same allegations at a thesis she submitted in May last year — in the depths of the first wave of coronavirus — to the Technical University of Bratislava in neighbouring Slovakia.
 
   
He claimed the work contained “never-before-seen depths of gobbledygook, nonsense and plagiarism” and that more than one-fifth of the text had been lifted from other sources without citations, in particular an article from Forbes magazine.
   
Under attack by the opposition, Aschbacher “rejected” what she called Weber's “insinuations”.
   
Kurz wrote on Twitter that he “respected” her decision to resign, after the scandal piled pressure on a government facing criticism for its management of the second wave of Covid-19, widely seen as chaotic.
   
The chancellor added that he would name a successor on Monday.
   
Academic plagiarism is a regular charge levelled at politicians in the German-speaking world, where leaders often brandish postgraduate qualifications.
   
In Germany, two conservatives, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Annett Schavan, stepped down from the defence and education ministries in 2011 and 2013 over similar scandals, while current centre-left Families Minister Franziska Giffey has been dogged by plagiarism allegations for years.
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