A woman was an assistant in her husband’s law firm and helped embezzle client funds in the region of 60 million. She was sentenced to three years by the District Court in 2024. The Court of Appeal has now reduced the amount to 30 million and the sentence to one year and seven months. It is considered mitigating that she worked for her husband.

Others would say that it was aggravating. That the two entered into a pact to commit and conceal a criminal act at the expense of clients. As a lawyer one enjoys the trust of society. The prosecutor also emphasised this.
– The case shows the importance of cracking down on accomplices who, through the use of misleading information and incorrect documents, have contributed directly to covering up serious criminal offences. It is also a breach of the special trust that accompanies the practice of law, says Chief Public Prosecutor Geir Kavlie in Økokrim.

Nevertheless, the Court of Appeal justified the reduction in sentence precisely with reference to the marriage.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the woman knew that it involved embezzlement of client funds, but found it mitigating that the woman was in a relationship of dependency with her husband, and that it became a difficult situation for her when she became aware of what he had done.

The Court of Appeal views the case from the woman’s perspective. Should not a public court view it from the perspective of society? Is it not society’s interest that it should safeguard?
30 million is a large sum. This is therefore what the Court of Appeal believes the woman participated in and must be held accountable for.

Would the application of the law have been the same if it had been a Norwegian married couple who defrauded their clients? Or is it the case that the courts have begun to apply a different standard to foreigners? A relationship of dependency is cited, presumably meaning that she feared the consequences if she “jumped ship”. In the case of a Norwegian married couple, the court would have expected the spouse to speak out and viewed it as aggravating if she did not.

Here it is mitigating.

Have we begun to get two different standards for the application of the law?

The reasoning is striking.

The husband was in 2021 sentenced to five and a half years’ imprisonment in a confession case in Oslo District Court. He was convicted of gross embezzlement and gross fraud. (NTB – Norwegian News Agency)