Espen Barth Eide, Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced, on Friday 6 February, that he had asked the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to waive the criminal immunity of former Council of Europe Secretary General, Thorbjørn Jagland.
Thorbjørn Jagland, who served two successive terms of office in Strasbourg - from 2009 to 2019 - appears on numerous occasions in the correspondence of financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, published by the US Department of Justice on 1 February.
It includes dinners, holidays, plane tickets, a medical consultation, stays in luxury hotels and invitations to Epstein’s Palm Beach residence offered to Thorbjørn Jagland.
These revelations have triggered an investigation by the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime.
The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether Thorbjørn Jagland accepted benefits that could be considered bribes while he was both President of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
The Strasbourg-based organisation announced on 5 February that it would be working with the Norwegian authorities.
It plans to launch its own investigation. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)