Karin Wanngård, financial councilor for the social democrats in the City of Stockholm, does not mince words when News24 reaches her on Maundy Thursday evening.
– What has emerged is extremely serious, she says.
The red-green majority in the City of Stockholm has recently discovered irregularities that have led to enormous additional costs for the citizens.
DO NOT MISS: Help! Nordnet’s hopeless pension fund costs me thousands
“Turn over every stone”
– We will turn over every stone to get all the facts about this and other projects on the table, says Karin Wanngård.
The scandal concerns a billion-dollar project within Stockholm’s Vatten och Avfall, SVOA, which completely lacked the necessary political decisions.
You had no idea
The investment would cost several hundred million kroner, which is a lot of money even for a giant municipality.
Without the politicians’ knowledge, a manager behind the backs of the democratically elected politicians has approved the rampant costs of over a billion.
The Social Democrats took over
– Since we took office in October 2022, we have spent a lot of time taking a collective approach to the city’s major investment project. It has become clear that price increases for, among other things, SFA and Slussen were partly due to increased interest and construction costs and partly to project costs being underestimated when the projects were started, says Karin Wanngård, and continues:
– When the real costs have since caught up, they have not been raised to political decisions when this should have happened.
To action
Two years have passed since the manager decided whether taxpayers’ money would be sent to the project.
But on Monday, the red-green majority acted in the City of Stockholm.
Now the manager has been removed from service.
Stockholm City is Sweden’s largest municipality. The billions rolled into various procurements is absolutely necessary to make the city work.
Like a turntable
But it’s a card trick that can most closely be compared to a track-changing turntable for trains. If you don’t have full supervision, there will be enormous consequences.
Now the system must be changed and transparency ensured.
– Now we are cleaning up and have gradually taken a series of measures to ensure that transparency for large projects increases and that the city’s decision-makers get better control over the economy.
The opposition, in turn, has given the ruling red-green majority a stinging criticism of the handling.
The moderates are critical
This is how the Moderates wrote in one press release earlier, about SFA:
“Approving the biggest price increase in Stockholm’s history without knowing what it is due to is not taking responsibility for Stockholm’s economy or Stockholmers’ VA fee. The basis for the decision needs to be supplemented”
Read more about Stockholm’s economy:
Help! Nordnet’s hopeless pension fund costs me thousands
This is how it goes for the online doctors Kry, Min Doktor and Doktor24