WARNING: NORWAY HAS FAILED TO LEARN FROM SWEDEN
By AI Chat- FB-Anders Magnus-Human Synthesis-06 September 2026
Children and Families. Minister Lene Vågslid has failed to take notice of the very clear warnings coming from developments in Sweden.
Swedish political parties are now competing to introduce strict measures against welfare crime ahead of next week’s election. In Norway, the government does not appear to have learned anything.
By Anders Magnus
Published: 6 September 2026, 11:38
When Swedes go to the polls in a week to elect a new Riksdag, the fight against welfare crime is high on the political agenda.
The Moderates — the sister party of Norway’s Conservative Party — and the Social Democrats — the sister party of Norway’s Labour Party — have in particular launched a series of tough measures to crack down on extensive fraud involving tax-funded welfare.
The Swedish government is also planning a new control system to keep criminals out of child-welfare institutions.
Sweden has long been seriously affected by both welfare fraud and criminal actors operating within child welfare and other care services. This has been publicly known for 15 years, so there has been no shortage of warnings from across the border.
Nevertheless, the latest revelation of criminals operating within Norway’s child-welfare system appears to have come as a major surprise to the Norwegian government.
The revelation came in a report from the Anti-Work Crime Centre in the South-East Police District, covering Buskerud, Vestfold and Telemark. It showed that children in the care of the child-welfare authorities had been placed in organisations controlled by people connected to criminal networks.
The report covers the situation in only one of Norway’s police districts.
The authorities now promise that the entire country will be investigated for criminal actors within child welfare and welfare services. This will probably show that the problem is not limited to the South-East Police District, but exists throughout the country — perhaps particularly in Oslo, Østfold and Akershus.
Should there be stricter controls of NAV and the child-welfare system?
Yes
No
MANY WARNINGS FROM SWEDEN
On the very same day the report was made public, Children and Families Minister Lene Vågslid (Labour) suddenly found herself in a great hurry.
“Now we need to act urgently. The government will take rapid measures,” she said on NRK’s Dagsnytt 18.
But this is a scandal that could have been avoided if the government and the Minister for Children and Families had been alert and paying attention to what has been happening in our neighbouring country over the past several years.
The naivety and lack of action that have characterised our political leadership are almost incomprehensible. There has been no shortage of warnings from Sweden.
As early as 2011, Sweden discovered the criminal clans’ infiltration of the welfare state.
That year, the police launched a major investigation into crimes committed by clans in the city of Södertälje. In my book The Dark Side of Immigration, which will be published at the beginning of October, I write in greater detail about this:
“The investigation was a joint effort involving the police, the tax authorities, Försäkringskassan (the Swedish equivalent of NAV), the employment service, the security police, customs, the enforcement authority and the Economic Crime Authority.
“In total, 281 police officers and other public officials worked systematically for almost three years.
“The criminal activity taking place in Södertälje had also been observed in other parts of Sweden. What was new in this city was the scale, systematic nature and organisation of the offences — and how difficult it was for the police to persuade people to report crimes and testify in court.
“The police operation and subsequent court proceedings cost society just under NOK 200 million, and Sweden had discovered clan-based crime.”
MAFIA IN HOME-CARE SERVICES
As early as 2011, the alarm could also have been raised within the Norwegian government.
Even stronger warnings came from Sweden ten years later.
Two Swedish journalists then published the book The Home-Care Mafia, exposing how commercial operators within Sweden’s home-care services had collectively managed to defraud the system of half a billion kroner in profits.
This was followed by a series of reports from our neighbouring country, one after another.
In 2022, Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) published a comprehensive report on welfare crime against municipalities and regions.
Two years later, the Swedish police followed up with a report on welfare crime within health and care services.
Lene Vågslid says that action is now urgent.
But the fact is that she and her predecessors as Ministers for Children and Families have procrastinated, fumbled and failed to take notice of the very clear warnings coming from developments in Sweden.
Nor have Norway’s justice ministers over the past 15 years done their job of preventing criminal clans and networks from establishing themselves within the health and care sector.
In Sweden, a large proportion of the enormous profits now being made by criminals comes from fraud against the Swedish welfare state.
It is considerably more profitable to break into the public purse than to engage in other forms of crime.
Swedish authorities now estimate that welfare fraud generates four times as much income for criminals as drug trafficking does in Sweden.
Altogether, they estimate that welfare fraud provides criminals with income of up to NOK 75 billion a year.
CORRUPT DOCTORS AND FALSE SICK NOTES
The leader of the Red Party, Marie Sneve Martinussen, is now demanding that Children and Families Minister Lene Vågslid (Labour) appear before the Norwegian Parliament to explain the situation in the child-welfare system.
The Socialist Left Party, the Progress Party and the Green Party have also submitted — or intend to submit — written questions to Minister Vågslid about the matter.
“It is shocking and unacceptable that criminal networks have been allowed into the welfare state,” Martinussen says.
She points out that it is easier to commit fraud within private care services and wants the public sector to take them over.
Nevertheless, there is no reason to believe that welfare fraud will disappear simply because private care arrangements are subjected to tighter controls.
The sickness-benefit system can also be exploited on a large scale.
In May 2026, Sweden’s National Intelligence Centre published a report showing that Försäkringskassan had paid out SEK 1.1 billion to 11,000 gang criminals between 2020 and 2023.
“That is a very, very large amount of money,” said Henrik Thapper, an area manager at Försäkringskassan, to SVT, which reported that corrupt doctors were submitting false medical certificates.
“Historically, we have had a trust-based sickness-benefit system designed to meet people’s immediate needs,” Thapper told the television channel.
“This trust is being exploited by criminals, who can use sickness benefits to obtain a ‘white’ income.”
THE WELFARE MODEL COULD COLLAPSE
Norway can no longer take trust for granted either — quite the contrary.
In May 2026, Aftenposten published the results of a study conducted by the Institute of Transport Economics (TØI) into sickness absence among bus drivers in Oslo and Akershus.
It showed that sickness absence among bus drivers in Oslo and Akershus has increased sharply.
One of the researchers believes that some people may deliberately be abusing the sick-leave system by obtaining false medical certificates.
Many bus drivers are immigrants, and sickness absence varied considerably according to their country of origin:
“Drivers with backgrounds from Eritrea and Ethiopia had the lowest rates of sickness absence, at 5 and 6 percent respectively. Ethnic Norwegian drivers had a sickness-absence rate of 7 percent.
“At the other end of the scale were drivers from Iraq (14.5 percent), Sri Lanka (14.2 percent) and Pakistan (13.2 percent),” the article stated.
Jørgen Aarhaug is one of the researchers behind the report. He himself worked part-time as a bus driver in Oslo for six years.
“We have not found any logical explanation for why sickness absence is so high among drivers with backgrounds from certain countries or living in certain areas.
“One possible explanation is that some drivers deliberately cheat by asking for sick notes even though they are not ill.
“The sickness absence among some of those living in eastern Oslo is completely extraordinary,” Aarhaug told Aftenposten.
It is now high time that Norwegian politicians and authorities abandon the naive, trust-based system for payments through NAV, child welfare and other welfare schemes.
Much stricter controls are needed to prevent criminal actors from establishing themselves within child welfare and other care services.
The sickness-benefit system and doctors must also be subjected to considerably stricter control procedures.
If these measures are not introduced immediately, we may find that the very foundation of the Norwegian welfare model begins to collapse.
