With regard to the many Norwegian ramifications in the Epstein case, attention has thus far been directed at the medium-sized fish and those who are easily sacrificed: Terje Rød-Larsen, Mona Juul, Thorbjørn Jagland and Børge Brende.

Terje Rød-Larsen is the spider at the centre of the Norwegian network. But attention should in due course also be directed at Espen Barth Eide, Ine Eriksen Søreide, Jonas Gahr Støre and Jens Stoltenberg. They constitute the upper stratum of the nomenklatura – those who bear responsibility.

The transgressions and unlawful acts are so numerous and so extensive that they must have understood what has been taking place. It has been ongoing for a number of years. They bear the overarching responsibility. And they have refrained from doing anything about it.

As regards the Epstein case, several of those now in the spotlight appear to have rendered themselves culpable of breaches both of the Penal Code and presumably also of the Security Act. Whether this will have any consequences remains to be seen.

Jonas Gahr Støre seeks to trivialise the matter as concerning individuals. But the sheer scale, and the fact that it has been ongoing for so long, speaks of fundamental systemic failure.

The medium-sized fish are important. But the large fish, those responsible for the systemic failure, are even more important. So too are many lesser figures in the networks surrounding the large ones.

The useful errand boys, the straw comrades and the sextons, upon whom money and advantages drip through the same networks and cronyism, and through extensive elite circulation – they attest to the breadth of the un-culture.

Several of them repeatedly commit breaches of disqualification rules. Nevertheless, they continue sailing through the system with luminous careers, as though nothing had occurred. They appear as untouchable as Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul have been for years. It is scarcely comprehensible.

In Aftenposten 18 February we are informed that “aid millionaire” Njål Høstmælingen and former Jagland adviser Flemming Gade Kjerschow have been declared disqualified from organising the review of the foreign service.

The Chair of the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs, Per-Willy Amundsen (FrP), points out that no doubt must be allowed to arise with regard to ties or disqualification connected to the review. That is good! But the following question arises:

How could the Storting in the first place appoint someone such as Høstmælingen, moreover as head of the department with primary responsibility for ensuring that the national assembly conducts its activities in accordance precisely with law and constitutional rules?

Høstmælingen is a jurist and ought to have knowledge of law and justice, but he has a rather dubious past precisely in relation to law and justice. He was owner and managing director of International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI) from 2008, until the enterprise was exposed by VG in 2016.

During these eight years, ILPI appropriated more than NOK 150 million in aid funds. Several grants had been awarded in breach of the public procurement regulations, and moreover to projects for which ILPI was not even qualified.

In addition, documentation, reporting and follow-up were lacking. And the withdrawal of salary and dividends to Høstmælingen and the two other owners was substantially higher than normal.

The breaches of disqualification rules were so manifest that even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ own internal review concluded with “serious censurable conditions”.

The other owners of ILPI were Gro Nystuen and Kjetil Tronvoll, both with close ties to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Nystuen as a long-serving employee of the Ministry, where she, inter alia, headed the Section for Human Rights, and Tronvoll as an externally engaged consultant for the Ministry over a number of years.

That Gro Nystuen is also a jurist with public international law and human rights as her fields of specialisation did not appear to have given her moral scruples. The “serious censurable conditions” connected to ILPI likewise do not appear to have hampered her career to any appreciable extent.

She has, inter alia, served as Chair of the Council on Ethics for the Government Pension Fund Global (!) and been affiliated with the Norwegian Defence University College (FHS), and in addition she holds a number of positions of trust and board appointments. Today she is Assistant Director at the Norwegian Institution for Human Rights (NIM).

Kjetil Tronvoll’s reputation likewise does not appear to have suffered any appreciable damage from the ILPI scandal. He is today Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, and Pro-Rector at Oslo Nye Høyskole.

This is but one of several examples of how aid profiteers milk an aid complex without adequate control and monitoring mechanisms in a system in which private straws compete to reach as far down as possible into the large Norwegian aid sack.

Although there are many contenders, there may also be reason to highlight the consultancy firm Abyrint.

Abyrint has specialised in aid in Somalia, inter alia in order to monitor that funds from the World Bank are used for the proper purpose. Since its inception in 2013, the two owners have withdrawn more than NOK 140 (!) million for themselves in the form of salary and dividends.

One of the owners of Abyrint, Ivar Strand, is married to the Minister of Research and Higher Education, Sigrun Aasland (Ap), who, inter alia, has a background from Abyrint’s principal client, the World Bank. The other owner, Ian Hawley, is married to a senior adviser in Norad.

There is, in other words, no reason to cast doubt on the actors’ close connections to the client and to the purse. There is, however, good reason to cast doubt on their disqualification in relation to their spouses’ connection to the administration of the purse.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in December that it would address the matter. It is manifestly embarrassing for the Ministry. For the time being, however, Abyrint continues undeterred its activities monitoring that the World Bank’s funds are “well applied” in Somalia and elsewhere in Africa.

It is striking that this intermingling, cronyism and the blatant breaches of entirely elementary rules of disqualification are carried out by highly educated persons, often with legal backgrounds, and by persons who ought to know better.

And it is provocative that this nest of worms of network relations is allowed to continue undeterred year after year, entirely without consequences, even when they on rare occasions are caught with their trousers down.

How could Høstmælingen, only a few years after the ILPI scandal, be appointed as the Storting’s foremost legal adviser and supreme head of the Constitutional Department?

And how could Gro Nystuen serve as Chair of the Council on Ethics for the Government Pension Fund Global, and later be appointed Assistant Director at the Norwegian Institution for Human Rights, this too subordinate to the Storting?

The network cronyism within the Labour Party has been ongoing for a long time. We still recall clearly Police Commissioner Øystein Mæland (Ap) and former Minister of Justice Grete Faremo (Ap).

The former was, after the police’s appalling handling of the Utøya catastrophe, kicked upstairs to the position of Director of Akershus University Hospital (Ahus), where he has remained since, with nearly NOK 3 million in annual salary.

The latter was, after she was dismissed for irregularities and financial mismanagement at the UN in 2021, employed in the communications agency Try (Ap). Since March 2025, of all things, she has been appointed Chair of the Storting’s Oversight Committee for the Intelligence, Surveillance and Security Services (the EOS Committee)!?

A pattern is emerging. And parts of this pattern are what the Epstein files are now exposing. It concerns political networks, un-culture, elite circulation and extensive abuse of the voters’ trust and the taxpayers’ money.

Much is centred around the Norwegian aid budget. Around cynical aid profiteers seeking to get their straws as far down as possible into the aid jar. And the surest way to achieve that is to have connections on the inside.

Terje Rød-Larsen had old friends from LO/Fafo on the inside in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, such as former Director General Geir O. Pedersen, who channelled millions from the Ministry’s aid budget to IPI.

The same applies to the current Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Torgeir Larsen (Ap/H), who forwarded the IPI alert in 2019 to the Director of Public Prosecutions, without undertaking any further internal review of IPI within the Ministry.

Did he do so in order to shield his former party colleague Terje Rød-Larsen (Ap)? Or did he do so in order to shield his then party colleague Ine Eriksen Søreide (H), who was a close friend of Mona Juul (Ap)?

In a system of close networks, large sums of money and few control mechanisms, there are likewise not many, if any, who have any incentive to expose abuse, breaches of disqualification rules and dereliction of duty, or even corruption.

It is natural to ask: Cui bono? In other words: Who benefits? What services are being exchanged? And who helps whom? As a rule, it is someone on the inside.

Just as Terje Rød-Larsen had his old friends in Fafo on the inside, Njål Høstmælingen and Gro Nystuen in ILPI likewise had their old friends in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Norad on the inside.

Ivar Strand and Ian Hawley in Abyrint have their friends in Norad and their spouses respectively in the Government and in Norad well on the inside.

The intermingling in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Norad with regard to ILPI, Abyrint and Rød-Larsen’s IPI, as well as a number of private NGOs, several of which are directly involved in the Epstein scandal, is naturally something Jonas Gahr Støre, Ine Eriksen Søreide and Børge Brende must have known about as Ministers of Foreign Affairs.

They have been part of the same networks. They have frequented the same dinners and receptions, and they have cultivated social relations with the same people, inter alia Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul, both in Oslo, New York and elsewhere. They were all good friends and part of the same political nomenklatura.

And should they have been so naïve as not to have understood anything of what has been taking place, which is difficult to conceive, they nevertheless bear the overarching responsibility for not having followed up the Office of the Auditor General’s annual criticism and clear recommendations to establish adequate control and monitoring mechanisms in order to halt the persistent breaches of disqualification and anti-corruption regulations connected to the administration of the aid funds.

A clear and recurring pattern is emerging: There is poor control of the purse. It is so poor that it is characterised as “highly censurable”, to use the Office of the Auditor General’s own words.

Serious and continuous breaches of disqualification rules are taking place. But that is nothing new. It has been ongoing for a long time. And when they on rare occasions are exposed, it is external forces that expose them, as now, in connection with the Epstein files.

The breaches of disqualification rules are connected to established political networks, first and foremost within the Labour Party, but also across party lines to the political leadership strata of the Conservative Party, the Christian Democratic Party and the Socialist Left Party.

When these breaches of disqualification rules are discovered, they scarcely have consequences, neither for those concerned nor for the system that makes them possible. On the contrary. The party book trumps everything. The system reproduces itself over time. The nepotism is systemic.

Provided the network connections are sufficiently good, they are kicked onwards and often upwards in the system, to new, lucrative positions for which they are often not qualified either professionally or morally.

If we are ever to put an end to this nest of worms, both those who are caught with their trousers down and those who bear the ultimate responsibility for keeping this malpractice going must be held to account.

Those who are caught with their trousers down cannot repeatedly get away with apologising and saying that they have merely shown “poor judgement”.

And those at the top of the nomenklatura, who are responsible for not clearing up, cannot once again get away with saying that they “take responsibility by remaining in office”!