Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson under fire after aide admits eel fishing without license, lied to police
Amid new uncertainty about Sweden’s accession to NATO and an ongoing wave of violent crime in Stockholm, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has been caught up in an eel fishing scandal.
Keyword:
- A top aide to Sweden’s prime minister went eel fishing without a license and then lied twice to the authorities about it
- Prime Minister Nilsson paid a $5,400 fine for the breach, but his boss is now under fire for appointing him despite knowing about the incident
- European eel is a seriously endangered species and eel fishing is illegal in Sweden without a license
Kristersson was reported to a parliamentary committee on Monday by the main opposition party after admitting he was aware a top aide had been caught fishing for eels without a license and then lied to authorities about it when he appointed that aide as his secretary of state.
The helper, former journalist PM Nilsson, was fishing off the coast of Karlskrona in September 2021 when he said two men in another boat approached him at high speed.
Nilsson had just pulled up four traps containing 15 eels weighing a total of 11 kilograms, according to an official report.
“I had no idea who [the men] where. They had no signs on their boat or clothing that indicated they came from an authority,” Nilsson wrote in a post on Facebook, apologizing for his actions.
“The [pulled up] next to my smaller rowing boat and asked if they were my traps… I interpreted them as claiming the traps, they were quite offensive, and to avoid conflict I said I found them here and the traps were not mine.”
Nilsson wrote that after talking to him for a few minutes, the men identified themselves as working at the Maritime and Water Authority.
“I should have said then that they were my traps, but the situation was so embarrassing and surprising that I continued to deny it,” he said.
It was over a year before Nilsson was next contacted about the traps, this time he received a phone call from the Karlskrona police shortly before Christmas last year – two months after he was appointed Kristersson’s state secretary.
“I was surprised, didn’t have time to think clearly and kept my denial,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have done that – it’s better to say it like it is. When the Christmas holiday was over I called [the police] and changed my information.”
“I have been fishing for eels since childhood and belong to the southern Swedish eel fishing culture,” he added.
European eel is a seriously endangered species and it is punishable in Sweden to fish for them without a license.
Nilsson was fined 38,800 Swedish kronor (about 5,400 dollars).
“It’s been a tough and thought-provoking couple of days for me. You shouldn’t fish for eels without a license,” he writes in a separate post.
The prime minister admitted on Monday that Nilsson had told him about the incident before he was appointed last October, and told state broadcaster STV that he thought his secretary of state’s actions had been “stupid” but that he should not disqualify him from holding the job.
The Social Democrats in the opposition referred Kristersson to the Riksdag’s constitution committee later that day and said they wanted to investigate how Nilsson was appointed and whether it was appropriate for him to have a security clearance given that he had lied to authorities.
– Considering the problems we have with serious crime in Sweden, it is unacceptable that the prime minister’s state secretary lies to the police, says the party’s justice spokesperson, Ardalan Shekarabi.