Norway’s state broadcaster NRK’s journalist Lilla Sølhusvik interrupts Progress Party leader Sylvi Listhaug when she criticises the Labour Party for lying. “Surely you’re not suggesting they run a troll factory from Youngstorget?” (Labour HQ) Sølhusvik interjects. Listhaug then points to the election campaign lies that Health Minister Jan Christian Vestre himself later admitted were false. “Now the Labour Party isn’t here to defend itself,” Sølhusvik retorts. But in that moment, it was she who was lying.
The Labour Party was very much present. Sølhusvik is married to the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD), Torgeir Larsen. That is the position directly below the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Larsen has occupied a central position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the careers of Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul. He has participated in pouring out hundreds of millions to what turn out to be corrupt organisations.
UNOPS received 1.2 billion when Grete Faremo was chief. She had to leave in 2022, when corruption amounting to NOK 600 million was uncovered. Her deputy is to be extradited to the United States. The scandal has attracted international attention. She herself has not been questioned by the Norwegian police. On the contrary, she was taken back into favour, first in Try’s Council (Trys Råd) and thereafter as head of the EOS Committee (EOS-utvalget), which is to supervise Norwegian intelligence services!
You can’t make this up, as one says in American English. It surpasses the realm of fantasy.
Grete Faremo (Labour): Who will be part of “Team Sylvi”?
These are “conditions” we associate with Latin American regimes à la Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. But now NRK has had sympathy not only for him, but for Ortega’s Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba.
It is a dream that is collapsing. The Latin America expert Benedikte Bull lives on Rødbergodden, where violent asylum seekers roam freely around.
Yet she still defends the Latin American dream.
And therefore fails to see what is happening here at home.
A corruption-suspected top executive is brought home and given a new top position, not in just any agency, but in the one that is to supervise the secret services, including corruption.
Within this nest, the Epstein case has been allowed to flourish. In 2019 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs learned that Terje Rød-Larsen’s International Peace Institute was being used to recruit young girls for Epstein. IPI was a perfect cover for the recruitment of girls into Epstein’s network. Rød-Larsen’s chief of staff was Camilla Victoria Reksten-Monsen. For ten years. What happened to the girls, she must have known, given the close bond between Epstein and her chief.
Where is Reksten-Monsen now? According to VG, she is employed in the most secretive of the Norwegian services, the Intelligence Service (E-tjenesten). Which does exactly as it pleases. The Intelligence Service is already warning that it will not hand over material to the commission Amund Djuve is to lead.
If Sylvi Listhaug is to enter the ring with Lilla Sølhusvik, she must understand whom she is dealing with. If she understood that, she would have a ton of ammunition.
The Epstein case has struck the Labour Party amidships. But the opposition must discover it before the hole is patched.
In the description on Wikipedia, the marriage to Larsen is not mentioned.
Total control.
Prominent Labour politician honoured despite NOK 1.3 billion cost to taxpayers