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ENVIRONMENT

Why a political aide’s eel denial is causing friction in Sweden

The Social Democrats are calling for Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's closest aide to resign after he got caught poaching eel, then initially lying to police about it.

Published: 19 January 2023 19:14 CET
Updated: 21 January 2023 08:47 CET
Why a political aide's eel denial is causing friction in Sweden
The European eel is an endangered species. Photo: Emil Langvad/TT

It started in 2021 when PM Nilsson went out on his boat in the Karlskrona archipelago to fish for eel.

Instead, he got caught in a raid by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, who questioned him about the fyke nets he had put in the water.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Nilsson admitted that he found the situation so “embarrassing and startling” that he denied that the nets belonged to him.

A year and a half later, he wrote, a police officer called him just before Christmas. “I was surprised, did not think clearly and maintained my denial.”

The eel is an endangered species, and since 2007 eel fishing has been banned in Sweden for everyone but a small number of licensed fishermen.

Nonetheless, smoked eel is popular especially in southern Sweden where the tradition dates back hundreds of years.

“I have fished for eel since I was a child and belong to the southern Swedish eel fishing culture. Putting out nets was previously a natural part of the summer but is now forbidden for private individuals,” wrote Nilsson on Facebook.

After the holidays were over, he called police to confess, and accepted paying a 38,000 kronor fine for breaking Sweden’s fisheries law.

Nilsson has been Kristersson’s closest aide since Sweden’s election. Before that he was the political editor of Sweden’s main business newspaper, Dagens Industri, so he’s a familiar face in Swedish political and media circles.

PM Nilsson. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

Sweden’s political opposition on Thursday called for his resignation.

“It is not appropriate to have a state secretary [the title used by senior political aides in Sweden] who, as recently as December, actively misled the police,” the Social Democrats’ justice spokesperson Ardalan Shekarabi told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

“The government claims to prioritise law and order. Against that backdrop, it is extremely surprising that the Prime Minister’s state secretary has misled the police in an interrogation situation,” said Shekarabi.

Nilsson wrote in a text message to DN, as well as in his Facebook post, that he should have come clean from the start and that he was happy to accept his fine.

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POLITICS

Swedish PM won’t end Sweden Democrats collaboration over ‘troll factory’

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has no plans to break off the government's collaboration with the Sweden Democrats, he told a press conference, after an undercover investigation revealed that the party had been running a so-called "troll factory".

Published: 22 May 2024 17:24 CEST
Swedish PM won't end Sweden Democrats collaboration over 'troll factory'

During a press conference following a party leader debate in parliament, Kristersson, from the Moderates, was asked whether he, as prime minister, would put any pressure on the Sweden Democrats to stop using the anonymous accounts, which had been used to spread content of benefit to the party and degrade its political opponents.

He replied saying that he cannot make demands or take responsibility for the actions of the Sweden Democrats’ communications department.

“If your real question is: ‘Do you want to stop working together to solve Sweden’s major problems because I have strong objections to smear campaigns in Swedish politics’, then the answer is no,” he said.

He did, however, say that he had discussed the issue with Åkesson both in public and in private.

“[I’ve told him] that I dislike smear campaigns, that they need to answer legitimate questions put to them by the media, political opponents and coalition partners. And that I dislike anonymous accounts.”

He added that the Sweden Democrats should “moderate their tone”.

The Sweden Democrats had not only been using the accounts to smear opposition parties, but also the governing coalition of the Liberals, Moderates and Christian Democrats, which the party provides its support to under the Tidö Agreement, named after the castle where it was drawn up.

The Tidö Agreement includes a clause requiring all four parties to “speak respectfully” about each other.

In one clip from the Kalla Fakta documentary revealing the existence of the troll factory, Sweden Democrat communications head Joakim Wallerstein tells the group of troll factory workers to “find shit” on the Christian Democrats’ top candidate for the EU parliament, Alice Teodorescu Måwe, while others make fun of Liberal leader Johan Pehrson.

In another, one of the employees in the troll factory discusses what type of music to use when he should “shit on” the Moderates.

Anti-racism magazine Expo also reported that the Sweden Democrats had used their anonymous accounts to share white power material.

Since Kalla Fakta’s documentary was released, Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson has responded by claiming that Swedish media are carrying out their own campaign against his party, calling the documentary part of a “domestic smear campaign from the left-liberal establishment”.

LISTEN: Uncovering a Sweden Democrat troll factory

Kristersson did not wish to comment on Åkesson’s response, but he disagreed that Swedish media and political parties are carrying out a smear or influence campaign.

“I definitely perceive influence operations from other countries, and we often feed back to you [the media] and tell you what we know about those things. I obviously do not perceive any influence operations from parties, media or anyone else in Sweden.”

As far as Åkesson’s claims that Kalla Fakta had “infiltrated” the Sweden Democrats, Kristersson said that it would be “completely foreign to me to interfere with how free media operate in a free democracy”.

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