Thomas McIntosh
BBC News
Reuters
Tobias Thyberg succeeded Henrik Landerholm on Thursday – but quit on Friday
Swedish new national security adviser left a few hours after he featured his role as a sensitive photographer for sending his sensitive photographs anonymously to the government on the dating app Grindr.
Tobias Thyberg, who started working on Thursday and resigned on Friday morning, had omitted information during a background security check, the government said.
“These are old photos of accounts I had previously had on the dating site Grindr. I should have let you know about this, but I didn’t,” he told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Thyberg was scheduled to be in Norway with the Prime Minister for the Northern European leadership meeting on Friday, but the advisor’s participation was cancelled.
According to information provided to the Swedish newspaper Expressen, the government received several images of sexual nature from an anonymous sender.
It came shortly after a press release was issued that announced that Thyberg would take on the job of national security advisory.
Swedish Prime Minister Wolf Christerson on Friday said information should have been revealed during the review process, according to Reuters.
“It’s a systematic failure that this kind of information hasn’t progressed,” Christerson told reporters in Oslo.
The resignation comes just a few months after Thyberg’s predecessor in a prominent job resigned and was charged with negligent handling of classified information.
Henrik Landerholm announced his resignation in January after police began an investigation after allegedly leaving documents classified as unlocked safes at the hotel during a meeting.
In March, Landerholm was charged with careless handling of confidential information.
Prosecutors said in the indictment that Landerholm had revealed through negligence that “relating to conditions of a secret nature, disclosure to foreign power could harm Sweden’s safety.”
According to Swedish media, his lawyer previously said Landerholm believed he was innocent.
