Swedish official left secret NATO documents in airport toilet - found by cleaner

After Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's visit to Turkey in 2022, a binder with partially classified documents about Sweden's NATO accession negotiations was left in a toilet at Arlanda Airport. It was accidentally found by cleaners, writes UNN with reference to Dagens Nyheter.

Details

In November 2022, shortly after taking office, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson paid a visit to Turkey. During the meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, they discussed how Sweden could gain Turkey's approval for NATO membership. The negotiations at the time were accompanied by the highest level of secrecy - only a narrow circle of officials had access to them. The exact issues raised at the meeting were not officially disclosed, although it took Turkey more than a year to ratify Sweden's application.

"Now DN can reveal a security incident that occurred directly in connection with the Prime Minister's visit to Turkey. In Arlanda, after the Prime Minister's trip, an official forgot a folder with partially classified documents. According to DN, the documents concerned negotiations with Turkey. The material was found by a cleaner in the airport terminal, and therefore it ended up in the hands of unauthorized persons," the publication reports.

"The folder was left in the restroom," the publication specifies.

The fact was also confirmed by the government press service.

"It is true that a government employee forgot a binder at Arlanda after the Prime Minister's trip to Turkey, and that it was found by airport staff. The assessment was that the folder did not contain classified information. Therefore, a damage assessment was not prepared, and the incident was not reported to the Security Service," the official letter states.

According to DN, some documents had a foreign secrecy classification, which means possible risks for Sweden's international relations. At the same time, the government refused to specify how long the folder remained unattended and what exactly its content was.

"We do not go into details regarding the actions in connection with the incident," the press service explained. Kristersson and the employee who forgot the documents refused to be interviewed.

Addition

Typically, such folders are prepared for ministers and state secretaries before foreign trips and contain background materials and arguments for negotiations. Some information may be confidential, but the use of intelligence data in them is rare.

According to sources, the incident occurred when, after arriving, government officials were not allowed into taxis from the government plane, but were sent to the regular terminal. From there, they had to get home by public transport. It was then that the folder was left in the restroom.

The employee explained the mistake by stress and excessive workload, while within government structures, the rules prohibiting the use of taxis were criticized.

Shortly after the trip, Kristersson appointed his childhood friend Henrik Landerholm as his national security advisor. However, he himself committed three security incidents within six months: leaving his phone at the Hungarian embassy, a notebook at "Swedish Radio," and documents during the Gällöfsta course in March 2023.

Landerholm is accused of negligence in handling classified materials, although he insists that everything happened due to "stressful working conditions." The case in Gällöfsta was initially investigated internally, but without notifying the Security Service, and only later were errors found in the damage assessment conducted.

The preliminary investigation into Landerholm officially began almost two years after DN published details of his incidents.

Next NATO summit to be held in 2026 in Ankara - Rutte19.08.25, 23:05 • 3386 views