Receive free Norway updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Norway news every morning.
Norway’s former prime minister said she should have recused herself from several matters when in government due to her husband’s trading activities, as a growing conflicts of interest scandal engulfs the oil-rich Scandinavian country.
Erna Solberg, who was prime minister Oslo from 2013 until 2021 and currently leader of the opposition, revealed on Friday that her husband Sindre Finnes had traded shares 3,650 times while she was head of the government.
“I have been incompetent in matters I have dealt with when I was prime minister,” Solberg told a press conference. “He has [traded] even though he knew he shouldn’t do it, and he knew why he shouldn’t do it . . . A breach of trust is always difficult, and it is especially difficult in a family and a marriage. It hurts me to be so hard on Sindre as I am today,” she said, holding back tears.
Her husband had traded in a wide range of shares and products including state-controlled aluminium producer Norsk Hydro, defence group Kongsberg, and shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen, earning NKr1.8mn ($170,000) while Solberg was prime minister.
In a country that prides itself on high levels of trust in politics and politicians, Solberg’s admission will cause problems for her Conservative party which had just scored an important electoral victory on Monday, winning local elections for the first time in 99 years.
But the ruling centre-left coalition has also struggled with similar conflicts of interest.
Ola Borten Moe, the deputy leader of the Centre party, resigned as minister for research and higher education after admitting a conflicts of interest after buying shares in defence group Kongsberg just a week before he was involved in a government decision to award a contract to the arms maker.
Foreign minister Anniken Huitfeldt, a senior Labour politician, has held on to her job for now after her husband traded in companies including Kongsberg that she dealt with in government.
Norway’s Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime is investigating Moe but not Huitfeldt over the trades.
In addition to stocks, conflicts of interest have also emerged over senior appointments. Earlier this summer, Anette Trettebergstuen resigned as culture minister after proposing several friends to board positions at various cultural institutions. Labour’s deputy leader Tonje Brenna managed to hang on as education minister despite admitting to conflicts of interest involving friends appointed to board positions.
Investment experts in Norway say that politicians have long been hypocritical over share trading by, for instance, compelling the head of the sovereign wealth fund Nicolai Tangen to liquidate all his shareholdings while many of them or their spouses have traded actively.
“It amazes me that so many politicians and their spouses clearly seek excitement in the stock market,” former hedge fund manager Peter Warren told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.
Read the full article here
