Eleven current and former Norwegian foreign and development ministers — including sitting Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre — took the stand this week as parliament opened public hearings into their dealings with Jeffrey Epstein. The probe follows the US Department of Justice’s January release of millions of Epstein files, which exposed his connections to powerful figures worldwide.
Parliament’s Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs is running the hearings. Committee leader Jonas Andersen Sayed said “there are many people who have demonstrated very poor judgement” in maintaining friendships with Epstein. Not everyone agrees with the approach — former development minister Erik Solheim called it an “overreaction that will throttle the foreign service.”
Børge Brende, a former foreign minister who quit as World Economic Forum president once his own Epstein ties surfaced, insists he had no idea about Epstein’s past when they first crossed paths in 2018. Støre, Norway’s foreign minister from 2005 to 2012, says the two never had any relationship.
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Separately, parliament has appointed an outside panel of academics and legal experts — only the ninth of its kind in 140 years — to examine three decades of the country’s diplomatic conduct. Its findings aren’t due before 2028.
Police are running parallel corruption investigations outside parliament. Former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland — who also served as foreign minister and later as the Council of Europe’s secretary-general — is under investigation for aggravated corruption, suspected of profiting personally from his government career by accepting travel, loans and gifts that prosecutors say came his way because of the positions he held — among them Epstein’s financing help for an Oslo apartment in 2014. Prosecutors could only move ahead after Norway’s Foreign Ministry stripped the diplomatic immunity that came with his Council of Europe post.
Prosecutors have also charged Terje Rød-Larsen, the diplomat who helped broker the 1990s Oslo Accords, and his wife, career diplomat Mona Juul, over a 2018 Oslo condo they allegedly bought, with Epstein’s help, for roughly half of what it was worth. Juul faces a serious corruption charge; Rød-Larsen faces a lesser charge of complicity. Both deny wrongdoing.
Crown Princess Mette-Marit has also apologized publicly for her past friendship with Epstein, saying she felt “manipulated and deceived.” The parliamentary hearings don’t include her.
Related: Epstein Files Trigger Wave of Resignations Across European Leadership
