Neither Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (Socialdemokratiet, S) nor her Permanent Secretary, Barbara Bertelsen, will be present when the Court in Lyngby opens an unusual case on Tuesday concerning defamation and former spy chief Lars Findsen’s sexual relationships. Nevertheless, the trial is heavily focused on the Prime Minister’s Office’s role in the controversial FE case (FE is The Danish Defence Intelligence Service, ed.).
Who decided in early 2022 that party leaders at Christiansborg should receive intimate details along with a confidential briefing about the imprisonment of the then head of the Defence Intelligence Service (FE), who was suspected of having breached his confidentiality regarding a Danish-American cable partnership?
According to Lars Findsen, briefings for leading opposition politicians never occur without prior approval from the Prime Minister’s Office. He therefore finds it hard to believe that this wouldn’t be the case in the FE case, where leader of Dansk Folkeparti (DF) Morten Messerschmidt received a confidential briefing about the situation.
Messerschmidt has been summoned as a witness in Lyngby in the lawsuit that Lars Findsen has filed against the authorities, seeking compensation of around 50,000 kroner — or in other words, compensation for what he considers illegal violations of his honor. Initially, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Moderaterne, M) was also supposed to testify, but Findsen and his lawyer, Lars Kjeldsen, have withdrawn this requirement at the last minute following new information from the opposition.
Ahead of the trial, Lars Findsen writes to Politiken, stating that the money is secondary but that the case is a »principled stance«, because there »must be limits to what civil servants should endure these years«:
»My family and I have been subjected to numerous violations and attempts at intimidation, which are hard to connect with the traditionally proper exercise of authority that I have known for 30 years as a civil servant. Although this process is not pleasant, there was really no alternative but to pursue the case«.
Since the Prosecution Service and government dropped the charges against Lars Findsen in November 2023, he has left public service with a compensation and three years’ salary amounting to just over seven million kroner. But now he wants the courts to decide whether it was legitimate when images of a sexual nature were seized from his mobile phone, as stated in the case documents.
Løkke under witness responsibility
After Lars Findsen was arrested at Copenhagen Airport in December 2021 and detained, the government led by Mette Frederiksen summoned several party leaders for a confidential briefing at the Danish Ministry of Justice, where the spy chief’s sexual preferences were among the topics discussed.
According to Politiken’s information, the then Minister for Justice Nick Hækkerup (S), the current Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice Johan Legarth, and PET chief Finn Borch Andersen attended the briefings with the party leaders. It was reportedly the latter who explained the FE case and in that context drew a psychological portrait of the detained Findsen, who for decades was a member of the government’s and civil servants’ security committee.
At that time, Lars Løkke Rasmussen belonged to the opposition in the Danish Parliament, and like Morten Messerschmidt, he chose to speak about the confidential briefing at the Ministry of Justice in 2022 in Berlingske. Here the current Minister for Foreign Affairs described what he called an unbalanced briefing about Lars Findsen:
»It is also my perception that the very private information (about the spy chief’s sex life, ed.) presented at the briefing has no relevance to the case«.
How Lars Løkke Rasmussen remembers the briefing today could have been revealed by the trial in Lyngby, but Lars Findsen has decided not to call the minister as a witness. According to his lawyer, Lars Kjeldsen, this is because »the evidence situation has changed radically« in the past weeks:
»The Prosecution Service has now acknowledged that detailed information about Lars Findsen’s private matters was disclosed, and therefore it is no longer necessary for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to testify«, explains Lars Kjeldsen, who has no further comments and will elaborate on the background in court.
The Ministry of Justice initially tried to ban witness testimonies citing national security and relations with foreign powers, but the Court in Lyngby rejected this. Therefore, Morten Messerschmidt can now testify about who provided the information about Findsen and his »sex life, including the level of detail and whether it was stated what relevance this information had«, the judge writes.
Top secret
PET chief Finn Borch Andersen is not summoned as a witness in the trial. Without confirming or denying the content of the confidential briefings, the PET chief has previously dismissed that there was anything to pursue.
»I would like to completely reject that at any time, information was disclosed that was not legitimate and relevant«, Finn Borch Andersen stated in a written comment in 2022.
It has been seen before in history that intimate information has been used to blackmail politicians and public officials, but Lars Findsen denies that his sexual life made him particularly vulnerable to, for example, foreign intelligence services.
He refers to the fact that for almost 30 years as first PET chief, then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, and finally FE chief, he was security cleared to the highest level, Top Secret.
»I would obviously not have taken on the trusted positions I have held if I had been in any doubt about whether I could be blackmailed in any way, including due to completely legitimate intimate aspects of my private life«, writes Lars Findsen.
It is stated in the case documents that the spy chief’s sexual images also played a role during his detention, which the public, in lawyer Lars Kjeldsen’s words, would hardly have believed with their own ears if they had been present behind the closed doors of the courtroom.
But whether the judge in Lyngby will agree with Lars Findsen that he has been subjected to »a clear and obvious violation« without legitimate basis and under particularly aggravating circumstances is another matter to be resolved in the coming days.
The Prime Minister’s Office refers to the Ministry of Justice, while the legal advisor to the Danish Government’s representative Tomas Ilsøe Andersen has no comments before the trial begins.
