There are about 40 criminal families in Sweden and they have moved to the country with the aim of committing crimes - said Mats Löfving, head of the police's national operational department, Noa, in Ekot's Saturday interview this weekend.
The information comes from the intelligence service, says Löfving.
Researchers, criminologists and employees in the police with whom SVT Nyheter spoke confirm that there is family-based crime in the country, but say that they have not seen that the people in these networks came to Sweden precisely to commit crimes.
- Spontaneously, I would say that it sounds strange that we have 40 clans who live in Sweden and who have come here to commit crimes, but it is the police who have the data.
I do not know if you include networks that are not actually resident in Sweden, but which come here and commit crimes in different constellations together, says Manne Gerell, associate professor of criminology at Malmö University.
"Often here for other reasons"
Gunnar Appelgren, crime commissioner and gang expert, says that criminals within the same family are often in the country for other reasons.
- If you look at Södertälje, we have had a large immigration in the last 40 years of persecuted Christians who have established themselves in Södertälje.
Some of them are criminals and some of those who are criminals are in the same family.
But they have not come here to commit crimes, that is my opinion.
Police and criminologist Amir Rostami says that this type of structure needs a long time to develop because the relationships are more informal and dynamic than, for example, the motorcycle gangs' formal relationships.
- The family-based criminal structures I know of have emerged in Sweden.
They have had criminal intentions and taken advantage of the conditions that have existed here.
Different definitions
Linda H Staaf, head of the intelligence unit at the National Operations Department, partly agrees with the criminologists.
But emphasizes that there are also families who have come here for the sake of crime.
- We have examples of networks that were established 35-40 years ago, but we also have examples of networks that come here today solely for the purpose of committing crime.
There you see that there is a profitability and opportunity in Sweden in particular, says Linda H Staaf.
She also sees a bigger threat picture from the family-based networks.
- I would say that this is a much more system-threatening organized delinquency.
It is very much based on shifting power from the state to family-based networks instead.
There, they do not care that the state should have a monopoly on the exercise of power, she says.