In a short time, several cases of suspected espionage have been brought to attention.

Among other things, two brothers, one of whom is a former top manager within a government agency that has also worked at Säpo and Must, are being investigated for gross espionage against Sweden for ten years.

Today, there are a number of states that conduct illegal intelligence activities against Sweden - and according to Säpo, they have a significant capacity for retrieval.

In total, more than 15 countries have intelligence officers on site in the country, and in a government investigation from 2012, Säpo stated how many people were involved - from about one hundred to several hundred intelligence officers, each of whom can handle between one and four agents.

It gives a sum of between just over a hundred to up to over a thousand agents / potential spies.

False diplomats

Since the figures were presented, the group has grown, according to Daniel Stenling, head of the Security Police's counter-espionage.

- They have increased in the total arena.

It is completely in line with what we have said - that we see more activities from other countries towards Sweden, he says.

These are partly intelligence officers stationed at embassies under cover.

Säpo has previously said that every third Russian diplomat actually works for one of Russia's intelligence services.

And secondly, it is about intelligence officers who travel in for individual assignments and then return to their home country.

This group is considered to be considerably larger.

- They travel under other covers.

They move in the corporate world where you should think that they belong to companies or other parts of the private sector, says Daniel Stenling.

More aggressive activity

The suspected spy cases that have now become known clearly show that the activities against Sweden are taking place both more aggressively and with greater risk-taking, according to Wilhelm Agrell, senior professor of intelligence analysis at Lund University.

Fredrik Westerlund, security policy analyst at FOI, believes that even more spy trials are to be expected in the future.

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The older brother has worked for both Säpo and the Swedish Armed Forces.

Photo: TT