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CRIME

Swedish Justice Minister hits back at Polish MEP’s attack on Sweden

Sweden's Justice and Migration Minister Morgan Johansson has hit back at a Polish MEP who claimed Swedes were "fleeing" to Poland to escape crime and multiculturalism in their home country.

Published: 9 August 2019 12:19 CEST
Swedish Justice Minister hits back at Polish MEP's attack on Sweden
Minister Morgan Johansson said that relatively few Swedes move to Poland, but was also critical of foreign-born thieves in Sweden. Photo: Tove Eriksson / TT

Polish MEP Beata Mazurek singled out Sweden as an example of negative “consequences of multiculturalism and open doors to immigration”, saying “Swedes are fleeing their country to find peace and normality in Poland”.

In 2018, 1,689 people moved from Sweden to Poland, including 1,377 Polish-born people and 241 Swedes. In the same period, 3,851 people moved from Poland to Sweden, according to Statistics Sweden.

Mazurek, a former spokesperson for the Polish national-conservative party Law and Justice and current member of the European Parliament's group of European Conservatives and Reformists ( ECR), falsely claimed there were “sharia zones” in Sweden and listed “murders, increased crime, rape” as consequences of Sweden's immigration policy. 

Johansson told Swedish daily Aftonbladet that the claims were false, citing immigration and crime statistics.

“It's completely pulled out of the air,” he said. “In 2017-2018 alone, more than 8,000 Poles moved to Sweden, more than three times the total number of Swedes who live in Poland. The MEP should therefore rather ask herself why so many Poles are 'fleeing' Poland.”

He added: “Something which we actually do have a problem with is foreign gangs of thieves, not least from Poland. Foreign gangs are behind around half of all break-ins in Sweden and 90 percent of all thefts of cars, boat engines, and agricultural machinery. If the MEP can do something about that, I'd be grateful.” 

The country does not keep official records on the ethnicity of perpetrators, but a recent government-ordered study by National Council on Crime Prevention (Brå) found no link between the rise in reported rapes and assaults and the arrival of refugees. 

While Sweden has seen a rise in reported rapes since 2005, this was said by Brå to be likely due to “the expanding of the legal definition of rape” that year. Another factor is the way in which sexual crimes are reported in Sweden, where all reported events are recorded as crimes and several offences of the same type are recorded separately, whereas many other countries would count multiple rapes or assaults by the same perpetrator as one offence. 

Mazurek shared an article from the conservative daily newspaper Nasz Dennik, according to which there are 2,500 Swedish citizens resident in Poland. Citing a Twitter survey conducted by Norway-based far-right account PeterSweden it stated that many Swedes wanted to leave the country for “their safety and that of their families”.

The article also falsely stated that Sweden was home to 80 neighbourhoods “practically controlled by Islamists, where Sharia is in force”, with Stockholm's Rinkeby suburb as “the largest” and saying “the police don't show up there, the ambulance can't come in, there is chaos”.

Rinkeby is one of around 60 neighbourhoods described by police as 'vulnerable' or 'especially vulnerable', meaning they are “characterized by a low socio-economic status where criminals have an impact on the local community”.

These areas, including Rinkeby, sometimes require emergency services to act differently – for example avoiding parking vehicles in certain areas due to higher than average vandalism, or engaging in long-term community building work, but police officers working in these areas have previously told The Local there are no “no-go zones” in Sweden.

IN DEPTH: Working on the front line in Stockholm's vulnerable suburbs

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POLICE

Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

A new report in Dagens Nyheter has revealed over 514 suspected leaks of sensitive information from at least 30 members of the police force to criminals since 2018. Here's what we know so far.

Published: 30 April 2024 12:28 CEST
Updated: 30 April 2024 15:45 CEST
Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

What’s happened?

According to an investigative report by newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), multiple gang members have infiltrated the police force by, for example, dating police employees, or using family connections to gain access to sensitive information about ongoing cases.

The first article in DN’s series focuses on a woman the newspaper calls Elin, who met a man, Jonas (not his real name), on a dating app when she had one year left of her police education. She falls in love, but his only goal with the relationship is to get a source within the police force which he can use for access to secret information.

Over the course of four years until she was caught, she made multiple illegal searches in the police register for Jonas, his associates and enemies, as well as providing him with information on ongoing investigations against him.

Other cases investigated by the newspaper include a border guard who sold classified information to gangs, a police officer who leaked information to what DN describes as “one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals” and an investigator who was dating a man she was investigating, who she shared screenshots of sensitive information with.

In another case, the police received a tip-off that information was being leaked to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. It was discovered that a group of five alarm operators had made an unusually high number of searches for members of the Hells Angels, who were later discovered to have connections with the gang that they had lied about during their background checks.

What have the consequences of these leaks been?

In some cases, the leaks preceded revenge attacks on enemies of the gang member involved in the relationship. In other cases, the gang members’ enemies disappeared or were murdered.

Some of the people from the police force involved in the leaks were sentenced to fines for illegal data access or breaches of professional secrecy, while the evidence against others was not sufficient to prosecute. 

At least 30 employees had for different reasons been considered “security risks” and either resigned or were forced to quit, the newspaper reported, with over 514 suspected leaks taking place from police to criminals since 2018.

How do criminals find police officers?

According to DN, they look for things that can be used as blackmail, like police officers who buy drugs, or set “honey traps”, like the one used against Elin, where they meet police officers or students on dating apps and start a relationship.

“You take Tinder, for example, and set your search radius so the police school is in the centre. When you get a match, it’s easy to check if it’s a student, through class lists or how they present themselves on social media. They’re proud of their line of work,” Jonas told DN.

They might also use their family connections to put pressure on relatives who work in the police force.

Why is this important?

It’s important because Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related violence in recent years, with a surge in shootings and bombings as gangs fight for control over different drug markets.

Swedes also have a high level of trust in the police force – 72 percent according to a 2024 study by Medieakademin, topping the list of state authorities, with a higher level of trust than universities, healthcare, the courts and even the Swedish church. This was five percent higher than in 2023.

Although the vast majority of police officers do not leak information to criminal networks, Sweden does not have a history of organised crime infiltrating the police force, so officials are keeping a close eye on these leaks to make sure they don’t become more common.

On April 29th, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told TT newswire that the leaks were “very serious”, potentially putting trust in the police force at risk.

“There are many great risks and one is that trust in police declines, that people get the idea that mafia-like methods are used to infiltrate law enforcement,” he said, before adding that he was unable to say whether it constituted a threat to national security or not purely based on the initial DN article.

“But the mere suspicion of these types of connections are damaging,” he told the newswire.

What happens now?

Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told DN that he planned to call a meeting with police leadership about the reports, which he described as “extremely serious”.

“[At that meeting] we will consider the need for further measures,” he said.

“Leaking sensitive information to criminals is against the law and can have very damaging consequences for the work of the police force,” Strömmer told DN, adding that it could undermine trust in the police and “damage democracy”.

Last summer, the government increased the penalty for breaching professional secrecy, and a special investigator was tasked with looking at a potential reform of the rules on corruption and professional misconduct in February – the Crime Prevention Council is also involved in that investigation, where it has been asked to provide information on how gangs use government employees.

“Protecting the integrity of the justice system against infiltration and other security threats is a central part of the new national strategy against organised crime that the government decided on earlier this year, and it is given the highest priority in our assignments to the authorities,” Strömmer told the newspaper.

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