EDITORIAL • We Swedes are good at patting ourselves on the back. We see ourselves as the world’s moral superpower, where corruption and friends fixing jobs for each other only happen in other, inferior countries. But if you scratch the surface a bit, it looks different. Where power, money, and politics are intertwined like one big lump, and in the midst of it all often stands the Social Democrats.

Take Stegra, formerly known as H2 Green Steel. A massive project in Boden that would never have started without political decisions, state credit guarantees, and protection against all criticism that almost feels sacred. Everything is sold as ‘green transition,’ and in Sweden today, it’s like a magical word that silences people. Ask about the costs, the risks, or if it even holds up, then suddenly you’re a climate denier or a backward thinker.

But if you look closer, you can see how the old S-network is spinning. Ibrahim Baylan, who was the Minister for Enterprise and helped shape the policies for these green prestige projects. Then he leaves politics and pops up as an advisor at Vargas, the same group that Harald Mix runs and that is behind Stegra. Sure, he says he doesn’t work directly with that company. But come on, everyone knows how it works in those circles.

Then we have Mikael Lindström, with roots in the social democratic world, who is now responsible for public affairs at Stegra. His job? To be the bridge between the company and the politicians, between the corridors in Rosenbad and the tax money being pumped in. And Anders Sundström, a former S-minister and financier in the party, who reportedly has his own interests linked to the project and works as an advisor in the background. A heavyweight with both political contacts and personal gain.

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Accepted S-Corruption

And then the party’s cheerleaders: S-people who publicly cheer, go up to Boden and pose for pictures in front of the dream factory, and defend every billion in support without a single critical question. Just loyalty to their own.

That’s what makes it so bottomlessly hypocritical. The same party that has been whining for years about market failures, the need for strict rules, and how dangerous it is when private actors enrich themselves – they have built a system where the most important thing is which political friends you have. Profits are only bad when someone else takes them.

The green transition has become the perfect excuse for this. The climate is used to silence anyone who asks, and to shift the risks onto us taxpayers. If it goes to hell, it’s society’s fault. If it goes well, insiders cash in.

In other countries, this would be scandals, resignations, and investigations. In Sweden? Silence, excuses. What would be gigantic scandals in other cases become at best some article, authorities shrug their shoulders. It feels like we have accepted that S-corruption is the fine kind.

But it says a lot about us as a country. That corruption is only corruption when it suits to point it out. And that a party calling itself a labor movement has actually made the state a tool for its own circles.

If we want to talk seriously about the rule of law, transparency, and democracy, we must start where it actually hurts. And then we can’t continue to turn a blind eye to what’s happening on the backside of the green transition, and the Social Democrats’ role in corruption-Sweden.