The recent shootings, explosions and acts of violence “are eating into the legal society, warns Anders Thornberg, reports SvD.
The gang criminals engage in drug trafficking, arms sales and cheat welfare billions, which in the long run risks threatening the country’s democracy, according to the national police chief, according to the newspaper.
The non-governmental organization, Global Initiative (GI), which measures organized crime in the world, has ranked Sweden as the most criminal country in Northern Europe, something SvD was the first to report on.
In the latest report that the organization published in September this year, Sweden ended up with an index of 4.7. The index is built on a scale between 1 and 10, where 1 means no organized crime and 20 means widespread organized crime.
– We see that a lot of weapons are brought into Sweden, but the fact that we stand out in Europe can also be due to customs and the police discovering more today, says Johan Gustafsson, criminal inspector at the National Firearms Center at Noa, to the newspaper SvD.
Neighboring countries Norway and Finland end up at 3.75 and 2.98, respectively.
Despite the fact that this year Sweden lands in place 24, which means a better placement compared to 2021 when Sweden ended up in 23rd place, the index has deteriorated from 4.56 to 4.7.
The areas where Sweden stands out
Sweden stands out in particular when it comes to drug trafficking and human trafficking. When it comes to arms trade, Sweden ranks sixth in Europe. The organization GI gives the arms trade in Sweden an index of 6 on a ten-point scale. Both the confiscation of weapons and reports of weapons possession have increased in Sweden, according to GI.
According to the newspaper, there is a clear connection between drug sales and the arms trade. It is mainly the profits from drug sales that the criminal gangs use to buy weapons.
Sweden is also above the European average in several other crime categories such as extortion and patronage as well as cybercrime.