Norway parliament to appoint rare outside probe of ministry’s Epstein links

By Terje Solsvik and Johan Ahlander

OSLO/STOCKHOLM, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Norway’s parliamentary oversight committee unanimously agreed on Tuesday to appoint a rare external inquiry into foreign ministry links to Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deepening scandal over friendships with the late U.S. sex offender.

The release of a cache of new files in the U.S. has revealed a host of new Epstein connections with politicians, royals and the ultra-rich across Europe.

Norway’s white-collar crimes police have opened an investigation into Thorbjoern Jagland, former prime minister and foreign minister and ex-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, on suspicion of aggravated corruption.

On Monday, police announced that Mona Juul, who on Sunday resigned as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, was also being investigated for corruption. Her husband, former cabinet minister Terje Roed-Larsen, is suspected of complicity.

All three will cooperate with the respective investigations and see no merit in the accusations, their lawyers have said.

EPSTEIN SCANDAL REVERBERATES ACROSS NORWAY

But the police’s actions have not stemmed the demand for a public inquiry in a country where officials are expected to be squeaky-clean.

“If only half of what we have learned in the last few weeks is true, then this is terrible,” the Labour Party’s Sverre Myrli told reporters after a meeting of parliament’s Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs.

The files show among other things that Jagland and Epstein’s assistants made detailed plans in 2014 for Jagland, his wife, two children and his son’s girlfriend to visit Epstein at Palm Beach and the Caribbean island that he owned.

Jagland, then secretary general of the Council of Europe rights watchdog, has denied ever visiting Epstein’s private island.

In an email in 2014, he sought Epstein’s help in financing an apartment in Oslo.

Emails from 2018 showed Epstein asking Jagland to arrange for him to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and saying he had insights to offer President Vladimir Putin. Jagland promised to bring it up with Lavrov’s assistant.

Roed-Larsen’s ties to Epstein came to light in 2019. He has apologised several times for the relationship and in 2020 stepped down as CEO of the New York-based International Peace Institute, a think tank.

The files indicate that Juul and Roed-Larsen made plans to visit Epstein’s private island with their two children in 2011, though it was unclear if the visit took place.

In a message in 2017, Roed-Larsen called Epstein a “thoroughly good human being”, and in 2018 the couple received his help in negotiating the purchase of an apartment in Oslo that is now a subject of the police investigation.

In a will signed two days before his death by suicide in a jail cell in 2019, Epstein said he was leaving $5 million to each of the couple’s two children.

Norway’s crown princess, Mette-Marit, wife of the heir to the throne, apologised last week to the king and queen over a friendship with Epstein between 2011 and 2014, long after his 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm; Editing by Kevin Liffey)