Recently I came across and artice in EU Observer : "From welfare to 'Wild West': The man who profited from Sweden’s refugee crisis", which is part of a series of investigations conducted by Dutch investigative collective Spit and Italian publication Altreconomia into Europe's privatised migration market across six countries: Italy, Albania, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK.
In this story, we learn how a former member of the progressive left in Sweden turned the 2015 refugee crisis into a lucrative business, exploiting not only the people who had fled wars and persecution with housing in Sweden, but also his own country and affecting Europe as a whole to an extend. The business exploits of Jan Emanuel, a former socialist member of the Swedish parliament, have led to a soul-searching of a welfare state that gives an outward image of offering everyone high-quality publicly funded services in the Scandinavian nation.
Sweden in the 2000s had already outsourced most of its welfare sector to private companies (wait, what?). And Emanuel's case, a reality TV star turned new-public-management capitalist, demonstrates an even deeper pivot towards the capitalisation of public services. At one point, he became Sweden's most expensive refugee contractor, billing the state €10,000 per month per child: €2,100 for the family where the child was staying.
As Sweden grappled with some ten thousand people arriving every week during the fall of 2015, the opportunities to outsource the public services to the private sector exploded. It was an unprecedented influx for a state that, up until then, had the capacity to take in only 2,500 per week.The total number of refugees reaching Sweden in 2015 was 162,877, of which 70,000 were minors. Half of the minors came alone.While Germany had received the highest number of refugees in Europe in 2015, Sweden received the most per capita.
The article continues to describe how Emanuel set up his first "business"- HVB-homes: care homes for homeless and runaway youth.Youth care is the part of the welfare sector where privatisation has penetrated deepest, with 90 percent of HVB-homes being run by private contractors.His homes were soon criticised for understaffing. One of them promised 24 hour-staffing, but in reality, the nighttime staff was Jan Emanuel himself, who dropped by once in a while.
But it all went wrong in the end, as at his care home outside Uppsala, where unaccompanied minor refugees were housed, crimes were reportedly rampant. Meanwhile, Emanuel became part of former Social Democrat PM Göran Persson's circle, which was awash with men wanting to make a quick buck, many of them securing a well-paid job in banking or lobbyism after leaving politics. One of them was Per Nuder, often referred to as ”Sweden's most well-paid lobbyist,” who helped Jan Emanuel sell his HVB company for €2.2m, whereof Nuder's own share was €1.2m.
And this criminal activity spread throughout Sweden and across Europe as well. A total of 278 new companies specialising in the care of unaccompanied minors were founded just in the fall of 2015. About 14 percent have registered criminals on the executive board, while some have ties to organised crime, such as the motorcycle mafia Bandidos.
This revealing article, should be making headlines across Europe, however our media focus on the war in Ukraine and other issues, to turn our attention away from the crimes committed by such individuals, to the detriment of all: European citizens and migrants alike. Firstly, it is very interesting that this case comes from Sweden, a country often portrayed as a model for every other European nation; low criminality and corruption, high living standards, stable economy, progressive views on social issues, including migration.
The reality is very dissimilar as it seems. If such scandals took place in Bulgaria, Greece, Romania or Italy, the European press would be quick to make them known and blame these nations for Europe's migration woes. But when it comes to Sweden, a poster child of European leftist liberalism, the story is quite different.
In addition, European media usually blame "human traffickers" of third nations in north Africa, the Middle East or Turkey for the massive influx of migrants and refugees, but never people like Emanuel, individuals with strong and good connections and part of the political fabric of each EU member state. You see if they expose these individuals, the story of the so called "refugee crisis" that Europe is facing for over a decade now, quickly becomes a money making scheme for some of the European elites and other opportunists like Emanuel, to the detriment of European tax payers, that are asked to pay the bill as always.
So how will this narrative, to maintain this multicultural model that European elites pushed for in decades hold, or the "refugees welcome" movement, when it becomes clear that it is all a hoax, a exploitative scheme and nothing more? How will our ruling elites justify their actions and policies they adopted, if articles like these expose the corruption involved?
You see, it is easier to blame Belarus or Putin for engaging in a "hybrid war" against the so called liberal free democracies of Europe, by pushing thousands of refugees into EU member states, but who is going to hold these individuals like Emanuel accountable, for the damage the do to European societies for their own profit? Who is going to deal with the mess they are creating?
And so basically Sweden is considered progressive in its policies by privatising everything, even its own welfare sector to private companies, while other countries in EU- predominantly from the South and Eastern regions, are deemed as "backwards", just because they do not follow suit. As if privatising every state company or organization, is the way forward and something that needs to be copied from everyone, if they want to achieve the high-standards of Sweden's social and economic policies.
Well, I would not think so anymore. When you pass ownership to private companies of your welfare sector, you basically give power to individuals like Emanuel to make profit, while your tax payers and citizens are asked to pay and live with the consequences. And latelly we can witness the results of such crazy policies, when Finland and Sweden boasted the highest unemployment rates in October 2025, together with Spain.
It is not "progressive" to privatize all state bodies and organizations, especially those who deal with immigration and social welfare of the state. You are technically passing all responsibility and power to private owners, who in turn can turn your country into whatever they want, according to their interests and not necessarily the interests or wishes of your citizens. I am sorry but it must be the state that is held accountable by a parliament and the in extend the voters, that should maintain all controll and accountability.
Not that in nations that do not go down this way, there is no corruption or abuse of power, but at least they are not hailed as "progressive" in a mockery of the situation and only to promote an agenda or this rampant liberalism and faux progressiveness that has gripped Europe latelly, and which our elites tried to sell to us as the new norm. In addition, the result and consequences of this madness, is quite the opposite of what one would expect.
The Sweden Democrats, is a nationalist and right-wing populist political party in Sweden founded in 1988. As of 2024, it is the largest member of Sweden's right-wing bloc and the second-largest party in the Riksdag. Sweden, after resisting the Far Right and populism for years, has finally gone down the road of many other European nations, by turning to nationalism for solutions.
And people like Emanuel, jump on the rightwing populist trend, after for years posing as Leftwing Liberals. He is now a frequent guest on podcasts, he declares that there are too many immigrants and if they can't adapt, they need to get out, as he poses admiringly next to controversial British-American influencer Andrew Tate in a TV show.
Consequently, thousands of immigrants are caught in a system that basically never cared for their welfare and only brought them into Europe to profit from their presence and desperation. They find themselves in a continent that increasingly turns against them, profiling them as "free loaders", "muslim cancer", "third world colonists that will turn Europe into their lands", as they are caught in a system that wants them to remain second class citizens, so it can blame them for everything in the future.
As for the European citizens, they are also lied to by their own governments and media, that the problem of migration is brought upon them by outside enemies of Europe like Putin, or corrupt human traffickers in poor countries and that we have no other option but to accept millions of migrants that we cannot integrate, do not want them to assimilate into our societies, thus resulting to the rise of the Far Right across our continent; something that can only mean trouble for the future for everyone in Europe; divisions, segregation, economic downturn, limitations of freedoms for both natives and immigrants, limitations of freedom of movement and ultimatelly everything that Europe allegedly stood for.
This is shamefull and not only for Sweden, but for all Europe as a whole since this is surely not a strictly Swedish phenomenon. As this article explores and states, this incidents also affect the Netherlands, the UK, Italy and Albania so we are talking a pan-European issue that has been kept under wraps by our media and politicians, so the European elites cannot be held accountable for the grave mistakes, corruption and sell-off of European wealth and indentity or values. It is time to expose them and realize that we are been lied upon. The enemy is not the migrants, but politicians and opportunists like Emanuel, who with their connections and money, are destroying our nations and continent and are themselves in turn supported or covered by powerfull elites, with suspicious, dangerous agendas.
