Tuesday the Storting adopts the mandate of the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs (kontroll- og konstitusjonskomiteen) in the Epstein case. In an interview with NTB, Støre is concerned that the investigation may go too far. He wants delimitation. It is a poorly disguised attempt to lay down parameters for the work before it begins.
Støre is experienced and proceeds cautiously. He opens by requesting precise questions. He places the consideration of international work in front of himself.
– I wish to emphasise that we then formulate precise questions and objectives we want to have clarified, and that we ensure that it does not become a process that more or less suspects all international work of being in a grey area, because it is not.
Document has in several articles revealed that funds are being poured out to NGOs at home and abroad. Why should the Norwegian Union of Journalists (Journalistlaget) and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) receive large sums from Norad? This is a way of building political power. We find the same in the United States, where the Democrats have used USAID to build an instrument for political influence and control. That is why it was shut down when DOGE revealed the extent of the corruption. There has been little attention to these revelations in the Norwegian press. The similarities are too striking. The Government wishes to continue to use Norad as its own cash box.
Too much money too quickly breeds corruption. The system whereby employees in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD) leave and establish their own consultancy companies, often outside procurement rules, cannot be separated from corruption.
The UN system invites corruption. That one of the Labour Party’s own has been caught in corruption at a high level in the UN system indicates that corruption has become widespread in international cooperation. When Støre seeks to protect this by placing the poor in front of himself, it is a slick attempt to protect his own power base.
The story of Grete Faremo’s leadership of the UN project organisation UNOPS is a horrific example, but has received almost no attention in the press.
Fædrelandsvennen recently conducted a review. The Norwegian system’s willingness and ability to close ranks around itself is striking and cannot occur without the media participating in it. Everyone is implicated.
During the period when Faremo led UNOPS, Norway supported the organisation with around NOK 1.4 billion, while Norway also sat on the board, according to Panorama Nyheter (11 December 2024).
At the same time, former UN ambassador Morten Wetland worked as a personal consultant for Faremo. He functioned as a kind of “scout” in the UN system in New York and is said to have received up to 4,000 dollars per day, paid by the UN, according to Filter Nyheter, 22 May 2022. At this time, Wetland was a consultant as a partner in the PR agency First House. He should also be under scrutiny. (…..)
The head of Økokrim, Pål Lønseth, was State Secretary under Grete Faremo in the Ministry of Justice and Public Security in the period 2009–2013. He must be disqualified in cases concerning Faremo.
Five persons have now been identified as compromised by Epstein. They are so central that one can unravel almost anything if there is the will to investigate. Støre knows this. That is why he is nervous.
When an experienced politician professes his innocence, it should be met with follow-up questions. But the Norwegian press still takes declarations of innocence at face value.
– I have a clear conscience and stand by what I have done. If there are questions about it, I shall be the first to answer.
This is a cynical statement, and anyone with some insight knows it.
If the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs (kontroll- og konstitusjonskomiteen) does not dare to challenge such manoeuvres, the investigation will have no value. It will then become an execution of the five implicated. But Børge Brende, Terje Rød-Larsen, Mona Juul and Thorbjørn Jagland know so much that if they begin to speak, Støre may lose control.
He therefore places all the good civil servants in the foreign service in front of himself.
– I have myself worked closely with the foreign service and know that, by and large, there are conscientious people there who follow the rules and are aware of the values inherent in having an independent civil service bound by political decisions, and which implements them in a proper manner.
– Is there anything you now look back on that you believe could have been done differently?
– That is often the case in life, but I stand by what I have done. And remember that everything you do as a minister is set down in documents and budgets to the Storting, and it is debated and adopted, says Støre, adding:
– It is not something one simply does at one’s own discretion.
Such naivety is an insult to the journalist and the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs (kontroll- og konstitusjonskomiteen). But Støre is brazen and cynical. He asks whether there really are anyone so malicious that they would call into question the credibility of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is a typical exercise of power from someone who governs the Labour Party state.
There is a hidden threat behind it: you do not think that we know anything about you?
Let us anticipate and pose two specific questions to Støre:
Njål Høstmælingen worked, inter alia, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the human rights industry. An insider. He was caught feathering his own nest together with Gry Nystuen and Ketil Tronvoll. They left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and founded the International Law and Policy Institute (remarkably similar to the initials of Rød-Larsen’s peace institute). They received contracts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Norad outside procurement rules. The money poured in. VG exposed the operation in 2016: Receives giant contracts without tender. Millionaires from aid.
The three – of whom Høstmælingen and Nystuen were known as human rights experts – were compromised.
Nevertheless, Høstmælingen has returned as head of the Storting’s legal office.
Who ensured that Høstmælingen obtained that position? The one who did so knew that it would be a demonstration of the system’s power.
Grete Faremo ended up in an international scandal. She has been questioned by the FBI, but not by the Norwegian police. After being scandalised by the international press, she was given a path back into the system in Norway: she was incorporated into Kjetil Try’s stable as an adviser in 2023. She was taken back into the fold. But it did not stop there.
In 2025, Faremo was appointed the new head of the EOS Committee (EOS-utvalget), which oversees the intelligence services. She succeeded Astri Aas-Hansen, who was to become Minister of Justice.
In NTB’s coverage it is stated that she had to leave the UN in 2022 due to “financial irregularities”. Norwegian naivety is unmistakable. But this is not naivety; it is cynicism and brutality.
Behind the scenes, the Norwegian security state is being built, and Faremo’s experience as Minister of Justice and Minister of Defence may prove useful. Perhaps also her ability and willingness to stretch the rules may prove useful?
The system protects itself. As in a mafia film, Geir Pollestad (Centre Party (Sp)) makes a statement that the Progress Party (FrP) must also be included in the investigation, and refers specifically to the trip Per Sandberg made to Iran with his girlfriend seven years ago. He brought his official phone, of course.
Who has the power to appoint Høstmælingen and Faremo? Does anyone in the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs (kontroll- og konstitusjonskomiteen) dare at all to ask the questions?
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