Norway police investigate diplomat couple over suspected Epstein corruption
By Terje Solsvik and Johan Ahlander
OSLO/STOCKHOLM, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Norwegian police are investigating two high-profile diplomats in a corruption probe announced on Monday, part of a widening scandal in the Nordic country and across Europe over prominent figures' ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Mona Juul, who resigned from her post as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq on Sunday, is suspected of gross corruption while her husband, former government minister Terje Roed-Larsen, is suspected of complicity in gross corruption, police said.
"A new investigation has been opened in connection with the Epstein files ... We are facing a comprehensive and, by all accounts, long-term investigation," Norway's financial crimes squad, Oekokrim, said in a statement announcing the probe.
EPSTEIN FILES REVEAL CLOSE FRIENDSHIP, FINANCIAL TIES
Roed-Larsen's ties to Epstein initially came to light in the Norwegian press in 2019. He has apologised several times for the relationship and in 2020 stepped down as CEO of the New York-based International Peace Institute, a think tank.
But the couple's connections to the American financier, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019, returned to the spotlight after the U.S. Justice Department released millions of pages of files related to his case last month.
Among other references to Juul and Roed-Larsen, the files showed they made plans to visit Epstein's private island with their two children in 2011, though it was unclear if the visit took place.
Roed-Larsen, who appeared to have a deeper friendship with Epstein than his wife, thanked Epstein for "everything you have done" in a text message in 2017 and called him his "best friend" and a "thoroughly good human being."
Epstein also helped the couple negotiate an Oslo apartment purchase in 2018 and in an email exchange told the seller "it will become unpleasant" if he backed out of the deal over a price he considered too low.
And in a will signed two days before his death, Epstein stated that the couple's two children would stand to inherit $5 million each.
Lawyers representing Juul and Roed-Larsen did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
But speaking on Norwegian television, Roed-Larsen's lawyer John Christian Elden said the police probe appeared to concentrate on the 2018 real estate transaction and "some prior travel".
"Roed-Larsen is confident that each of these will eventually be dropped," Elden said.
POLICE PROBE WHETHER JUUL RECEIVED BENEFITS TIED TO POSITION
"Oekokrim will, among other things, investigate whether benefits were received in connection with her position," the police said in their statement, referring to Juul, who has represented Norway as ambassador to Israel, Britain and at the United Nations during her career.
The couple rose to prominence as part of a small group of diplomats facilitating the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, seen at the time as a breakthrough in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, although peace in the region remains elusive over three decades later.
Roed-Larsen, 78, briefly served as a cabinet minister in 1996 under then-Prime Minister Thorbjoern Jagland.
Several other prominent Norwegians also had links to Epstein, including Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who on Friday apologised again in a statement issued by the palace, notably to the king and queen.
In Britain, meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is pushing back against calls for his resignation over his appointment of Peter Mandelson, who had previously known ties to Epstein, as ambassador to Washington.
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm; Editing by Joe Bavier)
