Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt: ?It is not true and it will never be true.? Archive.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has taken the highly unusual step of denying rumours that her husband is gay.

“It is not true and it will never be true,” the prime minister says in an interview with Politiken.

Rumours concerning Stephen Kinnock’s sexuality arose in connection with investigations into the couple’s tax affairs in 2010, which at the time prompted the couple to publicly deny that they were to be divorced.

It now transpires that the couple’s own accountant in the tax case, Frode Holm, was the source of the allegation against Kinnock.

The source of the rumour became clear to the prime minister a week ago when the chairman of the Tax Commission, which is to begin hearing testimony on Tuesday, sent a letter to the prime minister with information concerning an appendix in which Holm had made a statement during a meeting in connection with the tax case.

“After lengthy discussions, Frode Holm said that SK (Ed: Stephen Kinnock) is bisexual or homosexual,” says the note, penned by Tax Director Lisbeth Rasmussen at the Copenhagen Tax Authority on August 26, 2010.

To Politiken, the prime minister says:

“First of all I don’t think it is a question that one should have to answer. But no, he is not. To be honest, it has been very difficult for the family, perhaps in particular for the children, to be confronted with such rumours. So as a family we feel the need to say that even if you repeat a claim many times, it does not necessarily make it true,” Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt says.

At the same time, the couple have decided to publish the 2010 Tax Authority decision, which found the family free of any wrongdoing.

“We have decided to do this to stop all the conjecture about what is in the letter. But also about what is not in the letter,” the prime minister says.

The question of whether Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s husband Stephen Kinnock should pay tax in Denmark, despite the fact that he lived and worked in Switzerland, was raised by the tabloid BT in the summer of 2010.

On September 16, 2010, the Copenhagen Tax Authority responded that Kinnock was not liable to tax in Denmark. A year later, the confidential decision was leaked to BT. Later developments, which indicated that Permanent Undersecretary Peter Loft at the Tax Ministry had been involved in handling the case, resulted in the government setting up a commission to investigate the handling of the case.

Under Danish practice, the Tax Ministry is not permitted to involve itself in issues involving the affairs of private individuals that are being handled by a Tax Authority.

The new information regarding Holm’s allegations about Kinnock’s sexuality have come to the fore in connection with preparations for the commission’s work. Commission papers also suggest that Holm’s comments reached Loft, who during a meeting with the Copenhagen Tax Authority Director Erling Andersen jotted down four lines and demanded that these be included in the report.

Loft writes, among other things, that the Tax Authority’s own information about Kinnock’s tax affairs “are strengthened by the information that you (Ed: Kinnock) and your representative (Ed: Frode Holm) have provided about your business and family affairs”.

The new documents also show that the BT tabloid was not only given a copy of the confidential tax report, but also knowledge of the four lines, and their background – Frode Holm’s comments.

A witness statement given to the police by Copenhagen Tax Authority Production Director Steffen Normann Hansen says that he received a telephone call the day before the newspaper ran the tax decision and was asked about the four lines.

Normann Hansen says that he “was in no doubt that Simon Andersen (Ed: BT’s editor) was of the view as a result of the phrasing, that Stephen Kinnock was homosexual”.

Politiken has unsuccessfully attempted to contact Frode Holm. In her entry in Politiken today, Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Stephen Kinnock write that Holm, who is no longer their accountant “has told us that his statements have been misunderstood and that he has never spoken to us or our advisers about our marriage”.

Peter Loft’s four lines were never included in the decision, as the Tax Authority did not believe they had any importance in the case.

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