Swedish prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former national security advisor, who resigned in January, for forgetting classified documents at a hotel.
Henrik Landerholm — whose appointment two years ago sparked debate due to his longstanding friendship with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — was charged with “carelessness with secret information,” the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement.
The charge was over a March 2023 incident in which the former national security advisor was reported to have left classified documents behind at a hotel conference centre.
The documents “concerned matters of a secret nature, the disclosure of which to a foreign power might jeopardise Sweden’s security,” according to the charge sheet.
They were left in an unlocked locker and the person who found them “can be linked to violent extremism circles,” it said.
Kristersson for weeks defended Landerholm’s ability to remain in his job, as the opposition called for his resignation, before Landerholm eventually resigned in January, after the police opened a probe into the incident.
According to Sweden’s leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), the documents were found by hotel cleaning staff and a co-worker retrieved them.
DN also reported that Landerholm forgot his cell phone at the Hungarian embassy overnight in December 2022, at a sensitive time for Sweden’s NATO application process, which Hungary was blocking at the time.
In another incident in January 2023, Landerholm forgot a notebook at public broadcaster Swedish Radio (SR) after an interview, it said.
The notebook was sent by taxi in a plastic bag to a Stockholm cafe, SR said.
Landerholm, 61, is a childhood friend of Kristersson and has held various government jobs during his career.