Norway’s parliamentary oversight committee unanimously agreed on Tuesday to nominate a uncommon exterior inquiry into overseas ministry hyperlinks to Jeffrey Epstein, a part of a deepening scandal over friendships with the late US intercourse offender.
The discharge of a cache of latest recordsdata within the US has revealed a number of latest Epstein connections with politicians, royals and the ultra-rich throughout Europe.
Norway’s white-collar crime police opened an investigation into Thorbjoern Jagland, former prime minister and overseas minister and ex-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, on suspicion of aggravated corruption.
On Monday, the police introduced that Mona Juul, who on Sunday resigned as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, was additionally being investigated for corruption. Her husband, former cupboard minister Terje Roed-Larsen, is suspected of complicity.
All three will cooperate with the respective investigations and see no advantage within the accusations, their attorneys have mentioned.
The Epstein scandal reverberates throughout Norway
However the police’s actions haven’t stemmed the demand for a public inquiry in a rustic the place officers are anticipated to be squeaky-clean.
“If solely half of what we have now discovered in the previous few weeks is true, then that is horrible,” the Labor Celebration’s Sverre Myrli advised reporters after a gathering of the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs.
The recordsdata present, amongst different issues, that Jagland and Epstein’s assistants made detailed plans in 2014 for Jagland, his spouse, two kids and his son’s girlfriend to go to Epstein at Palm Seashore and the Caribbean island that he owned.
Jagland, then secretary normal of the Council of Europe rights watchdog, has denied ever visiting Epstein’s personal island.
In an e-mail in 2014, he sought Epstein’s assist in financing an residence in Oslo.
Emails from 2018 confirmed Epstein asking Jagland to rearrange for him to fulfill Russian Overseas Minister Sergei Lavrov and saying he had insights to supply President Vladimir Putin. Jagland promised to deliver it up with Lavrov’s assistant.
Roed-Larsen’s ties to Epstein got here to mild in 2019. He has apologized a number of instances for the connection and, in 2020, stepped down as chief govt officer of the New York-based Worldwide Peace Institute suppose tank.
The recordsdata point out that Juul and Roed-Larsen made plans to go to Epstein’s personal island with their two kids in 2011, though it was unclear if the go to passed off.
In a message in 2017, Roed-Larsen known as Epstein a “totally good human being”, and in 2018, the couple obtained his assist in negotiating the acquisition of an residence in Oslo that’s now a topic of the police investigation.
In a will signed two days earlier than his demise by suicide in a jail cell in 2019, Epstein mentioned he was leaving $5 million to every of the couple’s two kids.
Norway’s crown princess, Mette-Marit, spouse of the inheritor to the throne, apologized final week to the king and queen over a friendship with Epstein between 2011 and 2014, lengthy after his 2008 conviction for soliciting intercourse from a minor.
