By: Sebastian Christensen
“I woke up at five a.m. in Sassnitz because men – or boys, rather – in fake leather coats walked around with mirrors on sticks to check under the trains in search of countrymen clinging to the brakes to get out of East Germany. It was formative,” Fredrik Laurin recalls when asked what made him the most decorated journalist in Sweden.
With three Swedish Grand Prizes of Journalism under his belt together with colleagues Sven Bergman and Joachim Dyfvermark they are the only journalists to have received it thrice. And the key to success is, apparently, simple.
“It’s about going back to the core: what is true and what is relevant? What does my gut tell me about it? Why am I upset about this? If you manage to explain that to me, you’ve done your job.”
The second of the three Grand Prizes covered the bribery of government officials in several countries by the weapons manufacturer SAAB, to have the states purchase their fighter jet, JAS Gripen. This investigation started with a gut feeling just as described. Laurin and his two colleagues would spend one day together, phones turned off, every six months, pitching ideas they had for investigations.
Looking at the size of the Swedish weapons industry at the time, with Sweden being one of three Western states that produced the most expensive military materiel there is, fighter jets, the question was simple: how does SAAB manage sell their planes? Their guts were firing on all cylinders.
Previous knowledge of the inner workings of the military industrial complex, a sector mired in confidentiality and run entirely on purchases made by individuals using tax payer money, meant they knew the playing field was open for financial corruption. Which also, after over four years of work and research, turned out to be the case when a source contacted them about SAAB sales in the newly formed Czech Republic, one of three countries featured in the investigation.
The Czech Republic, a country lacking fresh military materiel following the fall of the Warsaw Pact and subsequently the Soviet Union, yearned for a shopping spree, and SAAB needed the deal. An Austrian descendant of the Habsburg family acted as courier, physically carrying duffelbags of cash from a Swiss bank account to the Czech parliament in order to convince the MPs to sign the deal with SAAB. The descendant in question was promised 4% of a 20 billion SEK deal.
“The best explanation we ever got as to why he was that important was that he could read German, thus keeping track of what was said about the arms deal in German-speaking media,” Laurin recalls with a smile on his face. The extent of his involvement was indubitable following acquisition of the document that described the services the descendant provided, signed by the head of Marketing at SAAB. “It really was an incredible investigation. It was interesting to see what you could actually achieve through hard work and a well thought-out analysis.”
Like many of Laurin’s investigations, this one also turned into a police matter. One police officer was put on the case by the prosecutor, then head of the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, over the span of four years. Unsurprisingly, the case never made it to court due to lack of evidence. “I spoke to the prosecutor after he retired and asked him […] how, as a prosecutor, could you accept this?” The prosecutor responded that it was what was best for the Economic Crime Authority. The charges were subsequently dropped.
“If I am interested in how SAAB sold fighter jets to the Czech Republic, then the public will have to care too.” That is the role of the journalist: the only mandate given is from the public, and the journalist is the one to tell them what is true, what is relevant, and how to explain it. When speaking to Fredrik Laurin, this seems like the easiest thing in the world.
- Born 1964
- Graduated from the journalism program at Gothenburg University in 1990
- Three-time winner of the Swedish Grand Prize of Journalism, once with TV4, twice with SVT
- Currently Special Project Manager at SVT Stockholm
- Loves building, restoring and sailing boats