Swedish prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former national security advisor, who resigned in January, for forgetting classified documents at a hotel conference centre in March 2023.
Henrik Landerholm left the documents in an unlocked locker and the woman who found them, originally from Georgia, “can be linked to violent extremism circles,” according to the charge sheet and police investigation.
Landerholm — whose appointment two years ago sparked debate due to his longstanding friendship with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — was charged with “carelessness with secret information,” the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement.
Kristersson for weeks defended Landerholm’s ability to remain in his job, as the opposition called for his resignation, before Landerholm eventually resigned in January, after the police opened a probe into the incident.
The documents “concerned matters of a secret nature, the disclosure of which to a foreign power might jeopardise Sweden’s security,” according to the charge sheet.
According to Sweden’s leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), the documents were found by hotel cleaning staff and a co-worker retrieved them.
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The investigation notes that the woman who found the papers received 15,000 kronor ($1,500) a few months later from a Russian citizen active in the radical and violent Islamist milieu.
However, according to the investigation there is no evidence that transfer of money is related to the documents.
DN also reported that Landerholm forgot his cell phone at the Hungarian embassy overnight in December 2022, at a sensitive time for Sweden’s NATO application process, which Hungary was blocking at the time.
In another incident in January 2023, Landerholm forgot a notebook at public broadcaster Swedish Radio (SR) after an interview, it said.
The notebook was sent by taxi in a plastic bag to a Stockholm cafe, SR said.
Landerholm, 61, is a childhood friend of Kristersson and has held various government jobs during his career.
