Stein Lier-Hansen was once one of Norway’s most high-profile industrial leaders, representing employers in collective bargaining talks as head of their own national organization Norsk Industri. Now he’s been indicted for defrauding the membership organization for as much as NOK 10.6 million over a period of seven years, allegedly using members’ money to pay for his own passion for expensive hunting and outdoor life in the mountains.
Lier-Hansen, now age 69, abruptly left Norsk Industri in December 2023, just before last year’s labour negotiations were to begin in January. At issue, ironically enough, was workers’ discontent with industrial leaders’ high rate of compensation and refusal to share profits. No reason was given for what appeared to be Lier-Hansen’s resignation with severance pay, and he soon started working for the environmental organization Bellona.
Now he has left Bellona, too, after the Norwegian police’s economic crimes unit Økokrim indicted him earlier this month for corruption, serious economic fraud and white-washing. He’s now formally accused of charging Norsk Industri and its employer-members for the costs of his expensive hunting and hunting lodges on Norway’s vast and scenic Hardangervidda. He’s also accused of accepting so-called kick-backs amounting to NOK 1.9 million from one of Norsk Industri’s suppliers.
Lier-Hansen justified his demands for reimbursement of the large expense accounts he often handed in for such things as meals, lodging costs, hunting rights and even sea-plane transport into remote mountain areas. He attributed his expenses to “necessary network-building” on behalf of the organization and “professional representation” for a man in his position. Now he faces up to 10 years in prison for allegedly defrauding Norsk Industri, which represents industrial employers especially in negotiations with labour unions.
It’s all been highly embarrassing both for Lier-Hansen, a former state secretary for the Labour Party and leader of a national hunting organization, and for Norsk Industri itself, which is under the umbrella of Norway’s national employers’ organization NHO. Norsk Industri has been portrayed in Norwegian media as initially trying to cover up its former managing director’s use of members’ member money. Now Norsk Industri’s leaders are claiming they were “deceived by our former leader.”
In a statement issued by the organization’s board leader, well-known entrepreneur and oil supply industry tycoon Ståle Kyllingstad now claims that Lier-Hansen “misused the great amount of confidence he had in his position” over a period of many years. “What we thought was unacceptable representation (costs) has, according to Økokrim, not been representation. It looks like we have been subjected to serious economic fraud and corruption.”
Kyllingstad has earlier defended Norsk Industri’s failure to question or crack down on Lier-Hansen’s use of the member organization’s money by claiming to economic news service E24 (which initially reported on Lier-Hansen’s lavish expense accounts) that “we trust people.” He referred to a “confidence-based community” in which the organization functioned, attributing his and his board’s failure to act earlier on “Norwegian naivite, as some call it.”
Most were aware of Lier-Hansen’s passion for the mountains, wildlife, hunting and the great outdoors, though, and he was known for rarely spending time at the office. Now Kyllingstad had to admit that under his own chairmanship, Norsk Industri was subjected to “systematic violations of confidence over a long period,” with Lier-Hansen leaving his employer subject to “large, illegal costs, and that he in addition has enriched himself.” Harald Solberg, who replaced Lier-Hansen as managing director of the organization, put the blame squarely on his predecessor, noting that Norsk Industri “has zero tolerance for economic fraud and corruption.”
Now Kyllingstad claims that the organization has tightened its systems for approving expenses, strengthened its management through the appointment of a new economic director, established “new routines for control” and documentation and launched a new and transparent structure for budget managment and accounting.
Eva Grinde, commentator in newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN), predicted last week that Lier-Hansen’s trial will likely be a “tough dog-fight over reality.” She questioned whether Lier-Hansen was able to carry on with his expense account demands for so long “because those around him didn’t dare say anything, or were blinded by his power and position.” The “floodlights” at his trial, she wrote, “can be uncomfortable for more than Stein Lier-Hansen.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund