[ad_1]
There are around 40 criminal families in Sweden and they have moved into the country with the aim of committing crimes, Mats Löfving, head of the national police operational department, Noa, said in Ekot’s interview on Saturday this weekend.
The information comes from the intelligence service, says Löfving.
Investigators, criminologists and police employees with whom SVT Nyheter spoke confirm that there is a family-based crime in the country, but they assure that they have not seen people from these networks come to Sweden precisely to commit crimes.
– Spontaneously, I would say that it sounds strange that we have 40 clans living in Sweden who have come here to commit crimes, but it is the police who have the data. I don’t know if that includes networks that don’t reside in Sweden, but come here and commit crimes in different constellations together, says Manne Gerell, associate professor of criminology at the University of Malmö.
“Often here for other reasons”
Gunnar Appelgren, a crime commissioner and gang expert, says criminals from the same family are often in the country for other reasons.
– If you look at Södertälje, we have had a great immigration in the last 40 years of persecuted Christians who have settled in Södertälje. Some of them are criminals and some of those who are criminals belong to the same family. But they didn’t come here to commit crimes, that’s my opinion.
Police and criminologist Amir Rostami says that this type of structure takes a long time to develop because the relationships are more informal and dynamic than, for example, the formal relationships of motorcycle gangs.
– The family-based criminal structures that I know have emerged in Sweden. They have had criminal intentions and have 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 he 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 crimes. There you see that there is profitability and opportunity in Sweden in particular, says Linda H Staaf.
He also sees a bigger threat image in family networks.
– I would say that this is a much more threatening organized crime for the system. Instead, it relies heavily on handing over state power to family networks. There, they don’t care that the state has a monopoly on the exercise of power, he says.
