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SWEDISH-SAUDI ARMS DEAL

MILITARY

Spy agency cash used for Saudi arms plant: report

The shell company set up to carry out Sweden's secret plans to build a weapons factory in Saudi Arabia was financed with cash borrowed from the country's military intelligence agency, according to a new report.

Published: 27 March 2012 10:31 CEST
Spy agency cash used for Saudi arms plant: report

The company, Swedish Security Technology and Innovation (SSTI), was reportedly set up by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut – FOI) in order to oversee the construction of a factory for the maintenance and upgrade of anti-tank missile systems.

In order to keep the company secret, FOI needed cash in order to set it up, according to Svergies Radio (SR), which first reported on the secret plans for the Saudi weapons plant earlier this month.

However, FOI was unable to procure the necessary cash on its own, but instead had to rely on help from the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (Militära underrättelse- och säkerhetstjänsten – MUST).

MUST provided the cash to FOI in the form of a loan, according to SR.

Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten) spokesperson Erik Lagersten confirmed for the radio station that money was transferred to FOI, but claims that MUST didn’t know that the funds were to be used to set up the shell company.

“That’s something for the preliminary investigation to reveal,” he told SR, referring to the preliminary criminal investigation launched by prosecutors last week in order to determine whether the secret Saudi weapons deal may have violated the law.

FOI’s own investigation has revealed information leading the agency to believe “there are suspicions that a crime may have been committed”, it said in a statement, prompting FOI head Jan-Olof Lind to report the incident to prosecutors.

As FOI is a state agency, it isn’t allowed to start any companies without the approval of the government – something which, according to SR, did not occur in the case of SSTI, which was started in 2009.

The company was launched as part of what is referred to in confidential documents reviewed by SR as Project Simoom, a project started by FOI in 2007 with the aim of helping build an advanced weapons plant in Saudi Arabia.

At the time of SR’s revelations, SSTI CEO Dick Sträng, who is also a high ranking official at FOI, refused to divulge how the company was funded.

“I refuse to answer that question,” he told SR.

“I can’t answer it without lying.”

SR has subsequently learned, however, that SSTI was financed by FOI and that the start-up capital came in the form of a cash loan from MUST.

On Tuesday, FOI head Lind is scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee to answer questions about his agency’s connections to SSTI and its involvements in the Saudi arms plant construction project.

TT/The Local/dl

twitter.com/thelocalsweden

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NATO

Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday he would back Sweden's Nato candidacy if the European Union resumes long-stalled membership talks with Ankara.

Published: 10 July 2023 12:35 CEST
Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

“First, open the way to Turkey’s membership of the European Union, and then we will open it for Sweden, just as we had opened it for Finland,” Erdogan told a televised media appearance, before departing for the NATO summit in Lithuania.

Erdogan said “this is what I told” US President Joe Biden when the two leaders spoke by phone on Sunday.

Turkey first applied to be a member of the European Economic Community — a predecessor to the EU — in 1987. It became an EU candidate country in 1999 and formally launched membership negotiations with the bloc in 2005.

The talks stalled in 2016 over European concerns about Turkish human rights violations.

“I would like to underline one reality. Turkey has been waiting at the EU’s front door for 50 years,” Erdogan said. “Almost all the NATO members are EU members. I now am addressing these countries, which are making Turkey wait for more than 50 years, and I will address them again in Vilnius.”

Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, is due to meet Erdogan at 5pm on Monday in a last ditch attempt to win approval for the country’s Nato bid ahead of Nato’s summit in Vilnius on July 11th and 12th. 

Turkey has previously explained its refusal to back Swedish membership as motivated by the country’s harbouring of people connected to the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group, and the Gülen movement, who Erdogan blames for an attempted coup in 2016. 

More recently, he has criticised Sweden’s willingness to allow pro-Kurdish groups to protest in Swedish cities and allow anti-Islamic protesters to burn copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

In a sign of the likely reaction of counties which are members both of Nato and the EU, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the two issues should not be connected. 

“Sweden meets all the requirements for Nato membership,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin. “The other question is one that is not connected with it and that is why I do not think it should be seen as a connected issue.”

Malena Britz, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University, told public broadcaster SVT that Erdogan’s new gambit will have caught Sweden’s negotiators, the EU, and even Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg off guard. 

“I think both the member states and Stoltenberg had expected this to be about Nato and not about what the EU is getting up to,” she said. “That’s not something Nato even has any control over. If Erdogan sticks to the idea that Turkey isn’t going to let Sweden into Nato until Turkey’s EU membership talks start again, then Sweden and Nato will need to think about another solution.” 

Aras Lindh, a Turkey expert at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs, agreed that the move had taken Nato by surprise. 

“This came suddenly. I find it hard to believe that anything like this will become reality, although there could possibly be some sort of joint statement from the EU countries. I don’t think that any of the EU countries which are also Nato members were prepared for this issue.”

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