Irina Dergacheva
At the end of Dece-mber last year, the Stockholm police received a signal about the penetration into the house of Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. Arriving at the scene, the police found two women who turned out to be employees of a cleaning company sent to clean the villa of the newly minted chairman of the cabinet of ministers. Deciding to enter through the garage, they failed to properly disable the alarm, and it went off.
When checking the documents, it turned out that one of the cleaners, a 25-year-old citizen of Nicaragua (she had not yet had time to cross the threshold of the house), was wanted. According to her, she came to Sweden to stay alive, but after consideration by the Migration Board, her asylum application was refused. Nevertheless, the woman decided not to leave the country (even despite the order), but to go underground in the hope that fate would turn her back on her and she would be given a residence permit. In order to somehow earn a living, she (like many of her fellow sufferers) got a job without official registration, because she did not have any necessary documents and permits for this.
If this was not the villa of Magdalena Andersson, then, probably, her detention ended with the fact that the unlucky Nicaraguan woman was quietly escorted to a special center, where she would have expected deportation. But since she ended up in the home of a third person in the state (the first is the king, the second is the chairman of the Riksdag, parliament), then, as they say, there will be a scandal.
Of course, not only this cleaning lady is suspected of breaking the law, but also her company-employer. The first is in being illegally in Sweden and in getting a job without a proper permit, the second is in hiring a person without a legal status.
Andersson herself, at a recent press conference, commented on the incident as follows: “If it comes to that, then, of course, it is the responsibility of the company that hired this person. My responsibility as a consumer is to pay in a white manner. I also inquired about the collective agreement. However, here I should not only ask, but also contact the trade union and check its very existence. At the same time, immediately after the scandal, the prime minister’s contract with the “problem” company was terminated.
In Sweden, a country that is disciplined and loves order, compliance with labor laws is of the utmost importance. Workers and employers following it are protected by law from any surprises, and various troubles await those who depart from it: trade unions are effective, constantly on the alert and always ready to stand up for their members.
Security of the first persons
However, a much more exciting aspect of the incident with the illegal cleaner is the fact, to put it mildly, that the top officials of the state and himself are not serious about the security issue. When it became known about the appearance in the house of the Prime Minister of a person without permission to stay in the country, and besides, he was also wanted, critical eyes immediately turned to the SEPO security police, responsible for protecting the country’s top officials: how could it happen that could a person easily enter Magdalena Andersson’s house without proper verification? The cleaning lady herself confirmed that no one checked her and that she cleaned the Andersson house before, even when she was the Minister of Finance.
“This is unthinkable! I don’t know what could be worse. However, SEPO does not want to admit its responsibility. But then whose responsibility is it!” – security expert Dick Malmlund was indignant in an interview with a correspondent of the SVT television channel.
SEPO does not comment on “an individual case”, but instead spoke through press secretary Nina Odermalm Schej about the general approach to fulfilling the tasks entrusted to her: “As a rule, it is not a question of the security police, what services a person from the central government buys. When In this regard, the safety of our charges is a top priority, and therefore we are constantly taking the necessary measures. What they are, we cannot disclose.”
The liberal newspaper Expressen, which was the first to report on SEPO’s oversight of the illegal cleaner, asked Israeli security expert Yossi Mellman to comment on the incident, weaving into his interview a story about a similar, but at the same time much more serious incident that occurred in Israel in November, when it turned out that the house of the Minister of Defense was cleaned by a person with a very specific criminal past – with five convictions (for bank robbery and burglary). He was exposed only when he tried to sell secrets found in a serviced home to an Iranian hacker. To confirm his seriousness, the janitor even sent the hacker photographs of him in the minister’s house, shots of the official’s desktop, his computers and phone, his IP address, and his family photographs.
“If you protect a person, then everywhere. In the office, in the car, at his home. For natural reasons, Sweden is not as concerned about security issues as in Israel, which has been at war for many years. But here they are (the security police ) made a big mistake. We are talking about naivety here,” an Israeli expert commented on the incident with a 25-year-old Nicaraguan woman.
Although naivety in itself is not the worst quality, it is clearly not for the special services. So it is here: the Swedes are a calm, conscientious, benevolent and pragmatic people. Street crime is low. The highest officials of the state, especially those who are retired, can easily be met on the street, in a store or collided with them on a charter plane. In other words, there are all conditions for the flourishing of naivety in the best sense of the word. However, if you look back, you can find more than one example, including a tragic one, when such an approach played a cruel joke.
For example, in 1986, Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated in the center of Stockholm, who was walking down the street with his wife without security, returning from an evening session in an ordinary cinema. In 2003, Foreign Minister Anna Lindh became a victim. She, as the most ordinary buyer, went to the central department store. The killer easily approached Lind as she was descending the stairs and stabbed several times.
Suspicions of espionage
It is worth noting that, talking to journalists, the detained Nicaraguan complained that in the media stories she looks like a person representing a danger to society – as if she is a spy and her home country’s relations with Russia also play some role in all this. The woman even swore that she was not a criminal, not a terrorist, she had never been engaged in espionage and had nothing to do with the government of her country.
The mention of Russia in this context is noteworthy. It would seem, where is she and where is the cleaning lady put on the wanted list? How can one not recall Shurik’s catchphrase from “Prisoner of the Caucasus”: “Excuse me, I also… destroyed the chapel?” However, it seems to me that Russia is mentioned in the media materials for greater texture – every bast in a line. And the Russian Federation has long been assigned to the role of Batman’s Joker and looms with a signature smile in the background.
After the detention, the cleaning lady addressed an open letter to the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, in which she apologized for breaking the law (refusal to leave the territory of Sweden after not receiving a residence permit) and asked to show mercy to her and leave her in the country, since she is expected to be persecuted in her homeland side of the regime she opposed. Whether this appeal will have any effect on her future fate is not yet known.
Sweden is among the leaders in accepting migrants
For a number of media outlets, the incident with the cleaning lady gave rise to once again look at one of the serious problems associated with migration – the existence of a shadow society consisting of migrants who do not have a residence permit. Sweden has traditionally professed a more than humane approach to such people, thanks to which it was quoted exceptionally highly among refugees and migrants seeking a better life. In 2015 alone, at the height of the migration crisis, the country took in more than 162 thousand refugees from the Middle East, being among the top three countries in this indicator. However, problems with integration have given rise to a number of other social problems, as a result of which, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the migration issue was one of the central issues on the local political agenda, and approaches to solving related problems have undergone a number of changes in recent years.
The Expressen newspaper is trying to hold everyone accountable at once, right and left alike, by laying collective blame on the right-wing alliance government, which was replaced in 2014 by a cabinet of social democrats and the Greens, and accusing left-wing parties of in recent years, they have not given the police the opportunity to effectively carry out the deportation of migrants subject to it, changing the rules and increasing all kinds of tolerances.
Another aspect of this problem is the abuse of illegal migrants by those who hire them. After all, no official agreements are concluded with these people, they cannot complain to anyone, they have no rights, not to mention the fact that they live in constant fear of meeting with the police because of deportation.
Speaking about the incident with the cleaner, Expressen did not fail to throw a stone at Magdalena Andersson’s garden. Noting that in her first speech as the new leader of the Social Democrats, she spoke about the personal responsibility of all citizens for the successful outcome of the fight against organized crime.
The author of the material sarcastically asked what is the responsibility of the head of the Cabinet of Ministers in all this.
