STOCKHOLM, Oct 19 (Reuters) – A Swedish appeals court on Monday found former national security adviser Henrik Landerholm, a friend of the prime minister, guilty of mishandling secret information, overturning a lower court ruling.
The case, involving documents left at a hotel in 2023, has embarrassed Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson as it unfolded against the backdrop of a deepening security crisis in the Baltic Sea region following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Kristersson submitted his resignation after his right-wing government lost its parliamentary majority in a general election in September, but he is leading a caretaker government while a new government is being formed.
Last year, a district court found Landerholm not guilty, saying he had been negligent, but not gravely.
“Unlike the district court … the court of appeal finds that the man disclosed the information contained in the documents through gross negligence,” the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm said in a statement.
“The only reasonable explanation for the man having left the documents behind is that he was quite careless when emptying the safe-deposit box where he had kept them,” it said.
The appeals court fined Landerholm, Sweden’s first national security adviser, 52,000 Swedish crowns ($5,247).
Landerholm, who has pleaded not guilty, stepped down in January 2025 after the investigations began.
His defence lawyer was not immediately available for comment and Landerholm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
($1 = 9.9106 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik and Barbara Lewis)
