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One of the most prominent representatives of the Center Party, Fredrick Federley MEP, took a break from his duties after it was revealed that he lives with a convicted pedophile. The man is on parole and is still under the supervision of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service. The celebrity site Stop the Press was the first to publish the information on November 24, and Federley, who is also the second vice chairman of the Center Party, himself confirmed in a Facebook message that the information about the man’s crime was true.
The Center Party has yet to comment on Federley’s future due to his sick leave, but party secretary Michael Arthursson has said confidence in Federley is damaged.
– It has emerged that you have known about what this person has done and that they have still been in a relationship for a while, we don’t know exactly how long, says Arthursson.
According to Arthursson he received the party learned of the relationship with the convicted person by its local representatives on November 23, a day before the information was made public.
“We received information about this from members of the local center party, which was later confirmed by Fredrick Federley himself,” Arthursson writes in a comment to DN.
Fredrik Jarl, C, chairman of the municipal board in Gagnef, is unaware that the party would have sounded the alarm locally and the party’s district chair in Dalarna, Jenny Drugge, declines to answer questions.
The management of the center does not want to give a more detailed account of how they work to obtain information and be able to answer questions about what happened.
After local members of the Center Party sounded the alarm and the information was made public, a group of people who knew Federley for a long time wrote a letter to the leaders of the Center Party with additional information. The letter, which SVT was the first to report on, was sent on December 4 and is addressed to party leaders Annie Lööf and Michael Arthursson.
In the letter taken by DN part of him says, among other things, that Federley knew as early as June that the man had been convicted of a felony, but then he toned down the crime and told people around him that the man was innocent.
DN has been in contact with people who wrote the letter and received text messages and saved messages supporting the claim that Federley misrepresented the verdict against the man. It also appears that he knew that the verdict concerned child abuse, but it is not possible to draw from that basis whether or not Federley at the time was aware of the actual crimes.
It also appears that Federley thought he would lose his job if the man’s background were known. According to the people who were with him and the condemned man, they have received instructions that the man cannot appear in images on social networks.
The letter to the Center Party leadership also states that Federley said that the Security Police should find out who is behind the reports made against him as a result of the relationship. DN has received information that proves this, but it is not clear if in that case it was at his request.
According to the party secretary, Michael Arthursson, they take the information they have received very seriously.
“However, this is not something we can comment on in more detail at this time,” he writes in a comment.
Wilhelm Agrell, Professor in intelligence analysis, he tells DN that the elected politician’s relationship with a convicted criminal can be a security risk.
– This is a classic security risk because it opens up to different types of extortion situations. At the same time, in contexts like this, there are proportionality issues between risk and integrity. I don’t think it’s a good idea for the parties to start doing too much self-control. But at the same time, there is widespread ignorance about security risks in several different areas, from information security to the vulnerability of key people, he says.
DN has searched for Fredrick Federley. He previously turned down an interview and wrote in a text message that he is on sick leave until the end of February.
“I’m stuck at the bottom and I need treatment and time to get back to the surface.”
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No decision has yet been made on Federley’s future: “Very difficult situation”
