Minister of Trade and Industry Ibrahim Baylan (S) has received harsh criticism for handling a report on Cementa's limestone quarry on Gotland, which the authority SGU, Sweden's geological survey, submitted to the Government Offices on 20 August.
SGU had also planned to post it as a news item on its website, but it did not become known until the beginning of October when Svenska Dagbladet's editorial page reported on it.
SvD's lead writer Peter Wennblad was also able to show how SGU in an email described that it had refrained from publishing at the request of the Government Offices.
That SGU perceived it as a wish has also been confirmed by SGU in, among other things, open interviews with SVT, and in a review of emails and other contacts that Svenska Dagbladet published on Wednesday.
However, the officials involved at the Ministry of Trade and Industry deny that there had been any request.
- If they have perceived it as a wish, it is their interpretation, says one of the officials to SvD.
"Does your reporting really need to be posted?"
SVT has requested the Teams chats that SGU's Deputy Director General Göran Risberg had with the ministry during the current period.
It appears that the discussion arises when Risberg announces on 19 August that "We will not make a press release but we will publish pm as news".
This causes the official at the ministry to react: "Do you mean that you will publish the report as news on your website?"
A little later he asks: “Do your reports really need to be posted on your website?
It is not a government assignment but an order from the Government Offices ”.
After telephone contacts, SGU then refrains from publishing the report.
"We need to publish"
The contacts are somewhat intense, and after SvD requested the report, Göran Risberg wrote to the official that "now the situation is such that we need to publish".
This is also questioned: “Does it have to do with the number of extradition requests?
Do you not usually just publish government assignments? ”
writes the official.
Göran Risberg tells SVT that he understands whether the Government Offices wanted to get to grips with the report, but that he insists that it was a clear wish.
SVT has sought the official to ask questions about his message in the chat.
Minister of Trade and Industry Ibrahim Baylan's press secretary Kajsa Loord writes in an SMS to SVT that "Ibrahim Baylan had no knowledge of it".
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See the tours that led to the company Cementa not being able to continue operations after 31 October.
Photo: Magnus Hjalmarson Neideman / SvD / TT