Response to interpellation 2024/25:632 on organized crime exploiting the welfare system

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! I was a bit too quick to wish Lars Isacsson a pleasant weekend and a safe journey home to Dalarna. We shall first attend to a remaining discussion between ourselves.

Lars Isacsson has, in fact, asked me if I intend to work for a unified national strategy against organized welfare crime, which includes assistance fraud, school fee fraud, and abuse within the HVB system. Furthermore, he has asked if I am prepared to work to strengthen the authorities' ability to quickly exchange information, revoke permits, and freeze assets in cases where there is suspicion of organized crime. Finally, he has asked how I view the need for new legislation, for example, inspired by Italy's and the USA's anti-mafia laws.

On 2 February last year, the government decided on the white paper Resilience and Action – a national strategy against organized crime. The strategy is the first of its kind, as Sweden has not previously had any unified strategy in the area. And now, work is underway to strengthen the efforts against organized crime in accordance with the strategy's goals and directions.

One of the overarching priorities in the strategy is to strike against the criminal economy. We do this in several different ways, including through the work of preventing criminals from exploiting public funds and using companies as tools for crime.

As an example, it can be mentioned that reviews are underway of several welfare benefits that are judged to be particularly vulnerable to criminal attacks. These concern the assistance allowance, dental care support, and the state wage guarantee.

The Government has also given a mandate to the Health and Social Care Inspectorate, Ivo, to both strengthen the work against unserious actors within the care sector and improve the supervision of group homes and residential care homes, HVB homes, which receive children and young people. This also includes that Ivo shall cooperate more closely with the Police Authority and the Economic Crime Authority.

Removing secrecy barriers to improve the possibilities for authorities to share information with each other in an efficient and simple way is another important task that the government is undertaking. On July 1 last year, a new law came into force which, among other things, entails an obligation for municipalities, pension funds, and certain state authorities to share information with each other in order to counter incorrect payments from the welfare systems.

Since April 1 of this year, there has been a law that gives a number of state authorities as well as municipalities, regions and schools an obligation to provide information to the police and other law enforcement authorities, both upon request and on their own initiative.

This leads to the fact that the government, as late as the end of April this year, decided on two new referrals to the Council on Legislation. These concern, among other things, a proposal for a new general secrecy-breaking provision which implies improved opportunities for all authorities to cooperate and share information with one another. This also applies in the other direction, for example from the police to municipalities. It also concerns that banks, insurance companies, providers of personal assistance, and employers shall be given an expanded obligation to provide important information that Försäkringskassan and Pensionsmyndigheten need in the fight against benefit fraud and organized crime.

Regarding the issue of anti-mafia laws, the government has developed legislation and is carrying out further legislative work aimed at achieving the effects that we have seen with various mafia legislations around the world, including the American RICO legislation. I shall mention some central parts of that.

The new legislation on forfeiture, independent forfeiture, which entered into force in November last year, makes it much easier to forfeit, i.e., seize, criminal proceeds and goes straight after the property of the mafia bosses.

We have also introduced a possibility to lock assets through payment security upon recovery of social security benefits in order to prevent criminals from hiding assets.

We have doubled the penalties for crimes that enable shootings and explosions, and we look forward to putting forward proposals for doubled penalties for everyone who engages in crime in a gang criminal context.

We have also appointed an inquiry that I pushed for as early as during the previous parliamentary term but which was unfortunately blocked then. It is an inquiry that is to look at a specific criminal liability for precisely participation in criminal gangs. It is a very important step and a central element in the type of mafia legislation that we have seen in other countries. Now it is finally underway.

We are also reviewing other crimes, including attempts and preparation and those types of crimes. It is about us reaching out and holding more people accountable.

Overall, I want to assure Lars Isacsson that the government takes the threat from organized crime most seriously. We do not shrink from taking necessary measures to protect Sweden from system-threatening crime, including choking off the criminal economy, which drives crime otherwise.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Lars Isacsson (S)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you to the Minister for Justice for the answer! I am aware that the Minister for Justice takes the issue seriously, and I share much of the Minister's reasoning.

It is still clear that we Social Democrats have a different basic view when it comes to how we want to build and protect the Swedish welfare state. It is not exactly a revealing news item that we view the marketization of welfare with concern, where tax money is channeled to companies without sufficient oversight, which has created vulnerabilities. We would never have accepted gangs or economic criminals running a health center in their own right, but today the same forces can in practice run HVB homes, schools, and assistance companies, often through front men and proxies. It is a systemic failure that requires political answers.

We Social Democrats believe that the public sector should have a significantly stronger role as a provider and responsible actor in welfare. It is not reasonable for the market to rule where society has responsibility, least of all in those parts of welfare concerning children, young people, and persons with disabilities. We must regain control.

With that said, and given the system we have today, I agree with much of the Minister for Justice's response. It is good that secrecy barriers are being removed, it is good that authorities are given greater opportunities to share information, and it is good with the new forfeiture legislation. But it is not enough.

Organized crime does not only strike against the economy, it also strikes against the trust in the entire society, the Swedish model, and our common institutions when criminals gain access to tax funds via healthcare, elderly care, and school.

If one is to be a responsible opposition, one should come forward with concrete proposals on how to make things better, and I have three concrete proposals that I would like to bring up and hear the Minister for Justice's reflections on.

The first is increased penalties for serious economic crime. One could have the criminal classification "extremely serious economic crime." Today, the penalties for systematic subsidy crimes or advanced fraud with public funds are often milder than for violent crimes. It must be more palpable to misuse all of our tax money. It would also be a direct crime-preventing increase in penalties. These are deliberate crimes – it is not about young people with poor judgment of consequences, but it is something that one includes in one's risk assessment as a criminal.

The second point I also raised during the question time yesterday with the Minister for Justice, namely a targeted assignment to the Swedish Payments Agency. Now that the police have seen that we have 62,000 [individuals] moving in gang criminal circles, it would be good if the Swedish Payments Agency received a targeted assignment to see if there are payments linked to persons whom the police have identified as gang criminals.

The third is a European business ban. It is not enough that we revoke permits in Sweden, and then one simply moves to another country, starts up a new company and returns to the Swedish market as a new actor. We want to see a cooperation in the EU that ensures that a business ban in one country applies throughout the entire union.

Mr. Speaker! The fight against organized crime requires powerful and coordinated measures. I therefore look forward to the Minister's reflections on these three proposals and that we can jointly take the next step to defend the Swedish social contract.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Lars Isacsson, for the opportunity to discuss these important issues today!

I just want to underline the importance of not only discussing the issues but also acting against the criminal economy. If we are to tackle organized crime, we of course need to do several things simultaneously. I usually condense, or simplify, the national strategy into three parts: It is about striking against the gross violence, i.e., the shootings and the bombings, breaking the recruitment of children and young people, and strangling the criminal economy.

We know that the criminal economy today is no longer largely composed of revenues from drugs. The criminal economy turns over 100–150 billion, and even though drugs now "only" constitute approximately half of that economy, it is of course an enormously central source of revenue for the criminal gangs. This leads to very large damages in the rest of society; it is the drugs that drive much of the violence, which in itself is reason to strike hard against it.

My point is to emphasize that what has truly grown over time is other economic crime that occurs in an organized manner. We know that it involves everything from systematic subsidy fraud to, as described here, people infiltrating various welfare services and welfare activities. In addition to this, we have the crimes that affect ordinary individuals, for example, elderly fraud and so on.

It is therefore incredibly central to choke this off. When we develop tools for crime fighting, it is important to keep in mind that these tools can also be directed towards economic crime.

I will take a concrete example: The preventive coercive measures, that is, the possibility that the police now have to also preventively direct coercive measures against the criminal networks, we ensure are designed in such a way that they can be directed against the criminal economy – not "just" against the violence, which is naturally the most brutal expression, but so that one can also prevent and preclude the economic part of organized crime.

I previously accounted for everything we do, but I would like to comment on the three proposals that Lars Isaksson raised in his question.

The first matter concerned increased penalties for economic crime. We can take action on that already today, before we go into the weekend. That is how it shall be. It is also an important part of the criminal justice reform investigation that police commissioner Petra Lundh will report on from the summer onwards. At that time, I also expect there to be proposals in the area of economic crime.

The second proposal concerned the mandate for the Payment Authority. I think it is an interesting proposal, which I must evaluate more closely. We already have a mandate for the new authority to follow the payment flows. In that sense, it is perhaps more a methodological question of how one wants to direct its analysis resources in as effective a way as possible to achieve what I assume we both want to achieve, namely to identify the individuals who use incorrect payments as a way to enrich themselves in a criminal manner.

The question of whether one should cut on another level and direct it more towards the individual, I gladly raise with the responsible minister for that agency. It is an interesting thought. I cannot assess more closely which method is most suitable, but it is absolutely worth discussing that question.

The third proposal concerns a business ban with European reach. I also think that is an interesting matter to discuss further. Such processes are ongoing. Now we are taking important measures to tighten the business ban nationally, and that will be significant. But I am fully aware that this crime is cross-border, so I am prepared to look further into that question as well when we look ahead.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Lars Isacsson (S)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you to the Minister for Justice for the answer and especially for the answer to my points – a "yes" and two "interesting"!

(Minister of Justice GUNNAR STRÖMMER (M): It is not a bad outcome!)

It is not a bad outcome for a Friday, of which one of the proposals came 24 hours ago!

I would like to continue where I left off: I believe that we need a coordinated offensive and a long-term strategy against welfare crime and economic crime. When you have been here for a while, it is striking how things and matters are connected.

We had just now a debate about local police presence, and this week I attended a seminar that the Social Affairs Committee had with Försäkringskassan regarding incorrect payments from Försäkringskassan and how much goes directly to gang criminals. The police were also there. There was a lot about register checks and what can be done, but then the police from Noa took up that in order to be able to monitor this, a local police presence is required.

Things and objects are connected. It is not enough to just put piece by piece, we must see the whole picture. Just like with any other organized crime, it is about business models: how one earns money, protects their resources, and washes their reputation through seemingly legitimate companies.

It is much that has been taken hold of in the USA and Italy when tools have been created to be able to strike at the organization itself, their assets and their way of acting.

One builds up a strategy that focuses on the structure and not on the individual. One strikes at the companies, freezes the assets and goes after the networks – and one does it early.

I was with some colleagues from the Committee on Justice in Sicily last autumn. There we learned that the popular uprising against the mafia after the murders of Falcone and Borsellino in 1992 was absolutely decisive. I believe we need something similar in Sweden. A general awareness is needed that things are not right when things are all too cheap. This is not just about political proposals and proposals from the police, but also about a popular uprising. This is not sustainable. It is as the Minister for Justice says: The criminal economy fuels shootings and explosions and that children are recruited to murder children.

The Social Democrats want to introduce Swedish anti-mafia legislation so that one can no longer hide behind frontmen and straw men or exploit loopholes in the welfare system. Those who participate in or profit from a criminal organization shall be able to be convicted even without every individual crime being proven. It is the totality that is the threat to society.

Mr. Speaker! I want to ask the Minister for Justice if the government is prepared to take the next step in shaping a Swedish strategy that strikes at the business model, corporate structure, and capital of organized crime.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! The strategy was decided already a year ago, and it is, as said, the first of its kind in Sweden. It would have been much better if we had had it ten years ago. We did not, but now it is in place. It is a unified national strategy against organized crime that clearly targets precisely those mafia-like structures and aims to choke the criminal economy.

It is clear that if one is to achieve any effectiveness in a Swedish mafia legislation, one must ensure that it contains components that function within our legislation otherwise. We have come far with that work. I want to mention some central components taken from the American and Italian legislation, where we are already far ahead. The first concerns breaking down confidentiality barriers.

I was at the Crime Prevention Council's 50th anniversary in the autumn. At the dinner, there was a quiz, as is customary at anniversaries. One of the questions was about what the theme was for the first edition of Brås official journal Apropå. It was "break down the secrecy barriers." We can gladden Brås's employees and the Swedish people with the fact that now, 50 years later, it is happening. It is central for this type of mafia legislation that one can share information between different actors, also between crime fighting and other actors in society. It is a component, and now it is happening.

The second thing I would like to bring up is that one truly must be able to strike against structures without being able to link individuals to the specific crimes. Therefore, it is important that we work with a proposal to criminalize participation in the criminal networks. That is, in practice, what we are talking about.

Lars Isacsson is not a particularly polemical type of politician. So I will not polemicize too much. But I can in any case say that I sat on a constitutional committee during the last term, where we really wanted to get S on board and enable mafia legislation by changing the freedom of association, even though we did it anyway to criminalize participation in terrorist networks. I personally had an email conversation with my representative Morgan Johansson on that issue, but we got a no. It was a shame, because we lost four years when it comes to getting through RICO legislation. But we shall not dwell on what has been.

We look forward and note that there is now a majority to change the freedom of association in the constitution in such a way that we can take the next step and criminalize participation in criminal networks. It will be a central component in a Swedish variant of mafia legislation.

I have already mentioned the third part. It concerns the possibility of intercepting networks preventively. By being able to do so without linking it to a specific suspicion of a crime, it becomes possible to target those individuals, not least further up in the hierarchy, who often keep themselves at a proper distance from the individual crime.

I welcome the commitment to a Swedish mafia legislation. I am convinced that there are more components. I am ready to listen to all good proposals. But I also dare to say that the central parts, based on examples from the USA and Italy, are already in place through the government's policy – or possibly on the way. This concerns, for example, as I mentioned, the criminalization of participation in the criminal networks.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Lars Isacsson (S)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you to the Minister for an important debate! It is interesting to debate with the Minister for Justice, and there are many things one would like to continue with.

I think that tearing down secrecy barriers is very good. It is then important to ensure that it goes both ways, so that it is not only municipalities that are to provide information but that they can also receive information from the police about, for example, HVB homes. I believe that it is important for the trust in this.

I know that there is a sincere will and ambition from several sides to stop organized crime. For us Social Democrats, it is very much about reclaiming control over the welfare state and breaking down the business model of crime – not just hunting individual fraudsters. I look forward to joining forces to work out a Swedish anti-mafia legislation.

The Social Democrats are a party that aspires to power and have done so since 1889. If one is to do that, one must also change one's politics when reality changes. If one has had a position previously, it can be a different position that applies now. I believe that even the Moderates can recognize themselves in the fact that one needs to reassess one's politics.

We have presented proposals aimed at a holistic view and strength in the work against economic crime, increased penalties for serious economic crime, a targeted mandate for the Swedish Payments Agency, a European business ban, a reintroduced audit obligation, and a clearer requirement for permits and background checks.

Mr. Speaker! I think we have been too naive in Sweden. I am sometimes tired of all the talk about us having been naive. But here we have – especially perhaps the bourgeoisie – had too naive a view on the marketization of the welfare state. It is time to close the safe in our common welfare. It is unfortunately the case that organized crime has turned healthcare and care into sources of income. This must never be accepted.

Many thanks to the Minister for Justice for the debate!

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Lars Isacsson, for an as usual meaningful and pleasant exchange on important issues! I agree that naivety might be a somewhat overused word in this context, but nevertheless, it is a reality if we look back a number of years in time. Between 2012 and 2022, the fatal gun violence tripled. The turnover of the criminal economy swelled to 100–150 billion. The recruitment of children was pushed further and further down in age. It is clear that it takes some time to turn that oil tanker.

I am very pleased that we are reconsidering the policy in almost all areas, for one thing is certain: If we do as we have done until now, it will go as it has gone until now. It cannot be an option for any decent society, nor for the Swedish one. Therefore, I take note of everything that is now being done. Naturally, Sweden would have been a better country today if it had been done ten years ago. It did not happen. Now it is happening. That is positive. It does not prevent us from needing to do much more. Therefore, I am attentive to the proposals from the Social Democrats and all other parties in the Riksdag.

I want to seize on a concrete point that Lars Isacsson highlighted and which is very important. It is that when we remove secrecy barriers, it should not only go in one direction. That is absolutely correct. The reforms we are talking about, not least the one that entered into force on April 1, do involve an obligation for a number of different actors in society to provide information to the police and law enforcement.

I have a joyful announcement. It is that a little further into the autumn, new legislation will enter into force with a general confidentiality-breaking rule that shall enable increased information flow in both directions. I know that at least many municipalities have a legitimate interest in obtaining better grounds to both make decisions regarding placements when it concerns children and young people and to make well-informed procurements, or whatever it may be. There, the rescue is on the way. Then we shall ensure that it also happens in practice. There, we must all help each other.

The interpellation debate was hereby concluded.

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