Dags att rösta fram årets värsta skatteslöseri

They are looking at the year's worst extravagances It has been a pretty eventful year What do you think about the year Extremely intense There is so incredibly much I don't think people realize how much there is I have had to start a podcast now called "Skattejakten" which is every week To talk about everything that happens as a form of therapy every week I needed several candidates like the top thousand But I ended up choosing the top ten and put together this list It's a stress every year This is getting closer Because there's so much to choose from What's on top of the list We are going without rank so there are ten of us The common point for all is that in each example there is a larger story So it can be crazy individual examples Budget-wise not always huge amounts Take the million-dollar lamp in Helsingborg for example It's 1.2 million kronor for a lamp It's obviously a lot of money for a lamp Where is this lamp located and who has paid 1.2 million for this lamp It is the city of Helsingborg that has done it They are moving around it I think they have moved it for the third time I saw a picture yesterday showing that they have moved it So they are going to create safety in this lamp But that in itself is a story The concept of safety I think there are lamps for less than 1.2 million But we also check the order They made this order in a very desperate situation forcing us to buy it now So that the money doesn't disappear until next year So it was part of the December foolishness That's when at the end of the year which is now people choose to spend money in order not to have less money the following year Then the lamp becomes representative of the problem So that each candidate has something bigger Check out Millennium for example So this journal system Which cost 5.5 billion It was replaced with paper and pen the same week it was launched Unfortunately this is huge amounts of money It's just a small part of a very big problem Another candidate could be the National Agency for Education's digitalization of the national exams 700 million It took eight years to develop but it still doesn't work Oh the National Audit Office has already looked at the state's IT investments this year They note that nearly half will become too expensive now and later Behind each is something greater Five and a half billion for the Millennium system Many said to them that it would go to the dogs He also took paper and pen into the woods There have been no consequences for anyone at all What do you think about it What do you think about the procurement system The public procurement law is often a burden when things get out of hand You have ordered incompetence I don't really know how to get what I want It's a problem One must remember that the public procurement law is about reducing the risk of corruption So that it's not just friends who get assignments This naturally brings more bureaucracy and difficulties I could sit here and talk all weekend about the public procurement law It's obviously a dysfunctional system when it can get this expensive Yes just as you said I think it's clear that no one has had to take responsibility It is not exactly known who is responsible I could reveal that 40 million kronor were paid monthly to consultants after the system was paused Continuing to work on something that is now being phased out A compensation commission is needed to clarify who is responsible and what it has cost 5.5 billion to use paper and pen These are not bad amounts What else do we have on this list What else do we have Yes I have them in my head But here we have Blufffakturer is the most obvious When I put the list together it's like this what is waste No one can say that this is not a waste There is always someone in May who is saying that something is the best investment ever So there should be two requirements First that it is a transaction related to something far from core business Swedish municipalities and regions have not done very well but they have defined what it is Care school care Something is also going to go wrong So it should be a stupid idea that goes to hell That's like wasting The most obvious thing is definitely fake billing Which is a candidate who has been involved before as well Men TV4 conducted an investigation this year It found that one in three municipalities has paid money to fraudsters Oh it's money that disappears into nothing How much is that roughly So they looked at what Just under ten million they could confirm I am convinced that this is extremely dark It's like that the fake invoices I have been able to expose but also TV4 they are quite obvious fake invoices I think there are very many who have not been detected by either journalists or ombudsmen It has become very sophisticated these setups That is when the public sector is billed for having acknowledged poor control over its finances Here it can be stated that nearly ten million kronor have been involved But I am sure that it is much more This suggests something about an even bigger problem It is welfare crime Incorrect benefit payments amount to up to 16 billion per year Welfare crime in Sweden amounts to around 75 billion kronor per year A small example of a huge big problem People who Jens Nylander has looked at this with the help of AI tools You've been looking at this for a while Do you see any kind of change Is it starting to go in the right direction I think that's what they start to do I still think that people take it upon themselves and try to modernize the systems It's human error and it's not uncommon With the help of new technology one can avoid it more easily I think the interest is greater A thing that specifically worried me about fake invoicing was that When this review was conducted this year a row of municipalities stated that this was a minor or non-existent problem The common point among the municipalities that said it was that everyone had at some point paid a fake invoice Some municipalities instead said that this is a huge problem They both had in common that neither of them ever paid a fake invoice It says something about having to identify the problem in order to actually solve it I'm sure those who really want to can get help from people like Jens Nylander and the technology I'm talking about pure fake invoices we're not talking about spiced up invoices No exactly Billing is its own story Interesting Somewhere on this list you also have recording Yes exactly It was a municipal audit it is Sandviken Municipality One who is notoriously known for poor financial judgment can still be said You can Google the Sandviken report if you want The men said what they did now was to create between 15 and 20 new jobs So it was an administrative chief from Sandviken municipality who came up with the idea that we should do a municipal census I think someone should have said no here It hit me then when I read it because it was a few years ago that it was written about I have never heard of any räkor from Sandviken Then early this year I called them and asked how it was going They would produce thousands of tons of herring which they would sell to ICA It was a business empire they wanted to build with others' money I called and explained that they had sent two officials from Sandviken to Arlanda to pick up the documents They were going to make American giant cranes But they had the wrong documents at the customs The fish died waiting for Swedish bureaucracy Oh well that was the end of the whole deal So there was never any reckoning This is something that could have been done in Forsmark I think in the cooling pond with warm water People have done some experiments in a certain municipality that would warm up a lake once Or a small place where people could swim They actually succeeded Then it ended up with a bunch of canary guests going there and pooping so much that no one could be there at all There are many intentions very often but not so much consequence analysis And the accounting is a bit like this The classic lesson is that politicians should not play with other people's money It's like a tiny version of something somewhere It's a classic example of a ridiculous story that sparks interest Do you have any personal favorite among this year's extravagances Or someone you take more offense to than the others The story is really quite funny A broader candidate this year is advertising and propaganda We can clearly see how the number of communicators which are state-funded has increased up to 40% over the last nine years It is becoming increasingly part of the public sphere My criticism is when it moves from information to advertising I've seen a lot of that this year There are examples where Region Halland for instance Nearly half of all regions have paid influencers to seek out dinners and such In Halland they even advertised a hotel that later went bankrupt and left 158 debtors behind We caused environmental damage just like that That's where we paid to advertise for an individual business owner And here too there is a will to put the municipality on the map There are many municipalities competing with each other to make advertisement films and work on branding and so on This year I could reveal that the city center of the year which is a competition was won by Halmstad It made me a bit doubtful since I come from there Halmstad is fantastic in every way The city center is not It's a problem But it turned out they had paid money to the company that issues the diploma But it also turned out that there were only three candidates So it was Trollhättan Hudiksvall and Halmstad that competed against each other Och Trollhättan and Hudiksvall who unfortunately did not win They celebrated advancing to the semifinals They were just the ones who were in the competition I don't think we should pay for North Korean prices with taxpayers' money That's a candidate I think is a bit What do you think about Halmstad paying to win this competition They themselves did not do it but they paid for the certificate and everything that comes with it Many signs point to it being a meat price that is paid as in their case Totally including the holidays over 750 000 kronor to this organization Then one must ask whether it is paid propaganda or an actual competition I think it's bad I believe people complicate things a lot For the defense here is that we want a more business-friendly municipality We want to learn and exchange experiences with other politicians There are already countless structures Take SKR where politicians meet all the time If you want to learn from companies go out and talk to them You don't have to complicate everything and create expensive structures with fees I think one should focus on core operations not on putting lipstick on pigs This is somewhat of a classic when it comes to municipalities wanting to market themselves We have seen quite a few examples before Municipalities have spent incredible amounts on slogans and various projects What is the development like Is it getting worse or better I feel it's getting worse and that's a bit why I'm including that candidate as well I see a trend where communication departments in municipalities and regions are increasingly relying on social media to engage with the public and partially agencies as well especially the prison service for example which is paid over three million for a logo They are beginning to resemble advertising agencies more and more This is a very natural development that must be identified and stopped It is in the nature of every organization to want to grow If a private company grows beyond its core business it will eventually go bankrupt The bottleneck is missing in the public sector There must be someone who calls a halt I see a growing marketing trend You mentioned the core business How common is it now for municipalities and regions to Do they come up with things outside their core business For example the term "platsvarumärke" is such a word that did not exist before 2009 Now you see that the trend is that it is being discussed much more It is municipalities municipal companies and authorities that are working to build their place brands It can get a bit messy sometimes Take Kumla as an example They spent hundreds of thousands of kronor on a trademark to erase the image It's just a prison This commune has so much more They have made a promotional film about it while the correctional service is trying to attract more staff They are also working with their local brand and aim to make Kumla an attractive employer They are doing the same thing against each other in a way The marketing trend is definitely on the rise and as I said looking at the data In 2014 there will be more public sector jobs such as communicators You're a bit further down the list What else do you have Northvolt is in You have to talk about Northvolt What do you think about Northvolt She might be a bit worn out We've followed her this year I was asked last year why she wasn't a candidate then My answer was that I was waiting for it to go bankrupt Unfortunately I was right Northvolt's bankruptcy is described as the largest in Sweden since the war crash If one looks at the cost to taxpayers through support loans guarantees and state investments Plus the efforts of the AP funds are in the multi-billion range where tax money has been injected No one knows exactly how much money it is I'm also saying that some kind of commission is needed to clarify how much money it is These are complex arrangements It's not always just tax money directly but also EU funding infrastructure etc We are seeing this trend now with Stegra This waste is provoking me for several reasons Politicians will always want to appear decisive They want to promise gold and green jobs Back in the day it was industrial support Then it was Steelworks 80 In the 1980s there was a plastic bicycle in Tera that we used to put tax money into It was a plastic thing In the year it was a battery factory and soon it might be a steel plant again The problem is not only that it's money straight out but also what is done to the communities affected For example in Skellefteå Advertisements have been placed in the Stockholm subway to attract people to work there People move there earn high salaries and buy into a real estate market that is nowhere near worth what they paid Politicians must ask themselves how to create tax revenues It is entrepreneurs who dare to take risks and test their ideas Sometimes one might borrow a house and home to do that Even that possibility has been denied to people in the north This is a tax evasion that has enormous effects We can only hope that the factory in Skellefteå will produce something good and that Stegra will also manage somehow As a result of this the government has reduced the green industry support They have halted it It has faced a lot of criticism There was debate in the Riksdag about this The Social Democrats are especially extremely critical of removing this support Social Democrats have even promised more for this I have trouble seeing They have more resources than me to conduct research on what the Swedish people think about it I find it a very strange promise I still believe and hope that the Swede sees through it We have no money for that The state should not pick winners What they are doing is like when you buy stocks If things are going well you can celebrate If they're going to hell your neighbor will pay for it This is not something the state should be involved in I am surprised that the Social Democrats are so openly promising more of this type of investment Yes it's a big deal What else do you have We have a parachute jumper as a candidate Every year millions of dollars worth of personnel are purchased in Sweden The interesting thing here is that during the year there may be good reasons to buy someone out What interests me is that one can see a growth in HR departments becoming larger and more numerous At the same time purchases are also apparently increasing Which is a bit contradictory to me Just as digitalization should lead to fewer intermediaries better HR departments should lead to better agreements Buying someone out should be the very last thing you do It seems to be apparently a simple way to buy yourself out of problems It doesn't matter whether the problem is with the employer or the employee It is tax money going to something that was not intended Over the year there have been several absurd individual examples For example buying out a hooligan on two occasions A rapist was bought out by two municipalities And there are managers who have been able to bounce between regions She was someone who described having been bought out four times She described it as carrying it like a medal So it's a system error somewhere That's where other people's money is going to make it easy We have seen quite a few or unusually many directors-general in recent years It hasn't really happened that way before So this is happening through the organizations at all levels Yes and I've looked at the larger municipalities for example And that's all the way from managers to In Malmö four guards have been bought out of the same position So it's happening all over What trends do you see How does it work and why does it happen What is the motivation It is usually because people make it easy for themselves It could also become a legal twist that could become very expensive You take less risk if you know that if you buy out this person for this amount it will cost that much Alternatively it's more complicated and can cost money The problem is when it becomes a universal solution You make it easy for yourself all the time It's probably a combination of poor hiring but also that they haven't actually addressed the issues Whatever it may be It's one and then Kiruna is back again Kiruna is back again They have moved churches Is it the bathhouse It's the bathhouse again It continues to cost a lot of money I have conducted several reviews of them this year It can be seen that they base their budget allocations on how much they have historically spent on the project itself It is about 20-25 million kronor per month This is a bit like renovating a house Craftsmen base their costs on what it has cost before You don't buy new doors and sinks every month You still have to pay an average of what it has cost historically It is extremely poorly managed economically This spa would have cost around 300 to 400 million Now the bill is up to 1.4 billion This has led to saving money on things that should be considered core operations It is a poorly managed municipality How far is it from being finished Is there a risk that this sauna will be on the list next year I really hope not They should be very close now But I'm not surprised if the budget runs out again I expect at least one budget increase before they are completely ready In all of this what patterns do you see Do you see any overarching patterns Is there anything that all municipalities and regions all public administrations do What causes waste in Sweden Is it corruption and bribes or is it incompetence and ignorance The conclusion is that it often happens later People spend money on things they shouldn't do We get the politicians we deserve People care less It's so simple when someone else pays you care less There is a tendency to not be so careful Of course there are systematic problems That is also what I am trying to identify in the competition It might be easier to incite people to buy out someone Saving money at the end of the year can be rational to avoid having less the following year Much is systematic We have an interesting example from Norsvold One of the managers of the AP funds was outside when they went bankrupt And he did not understand why it was such a media frenzy It was someone else's money Are you thinking about how to get to it First of all it's about stopping making silly decisions It's really that simple It can be tempting to want to spend other people's money A candidate from last year describes it well The path to tax exemption is often lined with good intentions It was when they paid 12.5 million kronor to build a pool in a nursing home She only dealt with palliative care No one could bathe in that pool I was the first and last to do it Don't make that kind of decision Do a consequence analysis If one looks at reforms then civil servant responsibility is part of it That is what I think is important Also independent municipal auditing To better examine how municipalities spend money Another interesting idea where some motions have been written this year It would beneficial to give for example the National Audit Office the opportunity to review municipal and regional projects This is a problem today It's not as if anyone is noticing these expensive projects A very large number of projects go way over budget Mia Karolinska-slussen Almost all major projects go over budget Why is that If you look at the research there Bent Fribjerg a Danish economic geographer I think he is He has looked at that One could roughly say that people tend to underestimate the cost and overestimate the benefit This leads to a project in Sweden on average being 40% more expensive than budgeted This amounts to many billions Every year 91 billion kronor are spent on infrastructure in Sweden So these are no small amounts of money These budget overruns can become very expensive But above all it's about not putting things off He continues This is called the sunk cost fallacy You have already spent money on something When you've invested 300 million in this bathhouse you want it done You're throwing good money after bad So you keep investing money Oh it becomes very dangerous when it's other people's money Because then the incentives are even greater to throw money after it This project's societal benefit may not be very good from the start It shouldn't be done And then one should stop it in time Oh it's also a small challenge for me as a slob There are examples where hundreds of millions were paid for instance to not build a hospital So the actual planning for a hospital in Kronoberg cost 360 million But it was stopped In Gothenburg they would build a funicular Investigating it alone cost 118 million It was a ridiculous idea I can criticize them for that But it's better that they cancel early than it costs several billions Do you find these mechanisms anywhere Or is there legal support for them Could municipalities have better stopping mechanisms Absolutely And in the end it's a political issue So it mainly lies with politicians But also that politicians must have control over their administrations Don't be afraid to be relatively close to them Follow up at the end and so on The opportunities are absolutely there To stop in time And nothing prevents them from stopping wasting money otherwise I believe at the core it is a question of public education Consumer power has been with us every four years People must start holding their rulers accountable More money does not always solve problems Being economically responsible must beneficial somewhere That we should have running water in this municipality We will build fifteen slides in the new swimming pool People are taught to be economically responsible I think that's very important In Sweden we have a system where a very large number of municipalities are running deficits You can get state funding to handle some of the possible tasks Education is absolutely expensive for the municipalities Healthcare is absolutely expensive for the regions This could lead to a rather strange culture You get much more money than you earn yourself What kind of culture do you see is it expensive In Sweden you have a municipal self-government that is not really a self-government I mean that you can do whatever you want until it goes wrong And then you should have money from the public above you It is clear that this creates problems with incentives There is an absurd example in Vimmerby They have driven the economy to such an extent that they no longer receive loans from Kommuninvest SVT holds the chairman of the municipal committee accountable and asks if she could not see that this was about to happen What would she then answer Yes we saw that this did not look bright But we lived a long time on hope Then eventually we realized that if nothing is done nothing will change It's a kind of quote I would have accepted if it came from a luxury car But not when it comes from the most decisive politics in a municipality There are few incentives to take responsibility What you' referring to is the leveling system It is extremely complicated It is said that there are only two people in Sweden who can do it And that they are not allowed to fly on the same plane It is so complicated But there is an incentive structure that absolutely must be re-evaluated There you can sit in an administration in any municipality and be motivated to spend money To avoid the risk of ending up in pink unicorns in Malmö Municipalities like Malmö and Gothenburg should not be allowed to be part of it You are becoming critics of what you are doing They can just claim that you are doing this only to lower taxes and to reduce trust in public What do you think about that criticism We are of course open to tax-paying associations but we are too low on fair taxes We have been like this since 1921 It is actually written here It must be that the time and the claims on the state treasury take on the character of a Christmas tree raid There is no one shouting stop It is clear that my job is to expose tax evasion o somewhere get more people to understand the triviality of expecting We want a good welfare and that means we simply have to spend money correctly It is clear that by doing so one can lower taxes and achieve better welfare if the right priorities are set What is wrong with what I am talking about Small silly examples provoke reactions I often repeat the systematic problems That's 200 billion kronor per year in lost digitalization It is about 75 billion per year in welfare crimes You have 50 billion in this type of industry support that Northvolt has received You have 16 billion kronor incorrect benefit payments each year We are dealing with huge sums Public procurement 100 billion and so on The point is that if we just look back and see what we can optimize we can save huge amounts The amount of unexplained excess costs in Swedish municipalities amounts to 91 billion kronor per year Before people start thinking about raising taxes we should address these issues That would be my long answer I have been doing this for quite a few years Over these years have you had a favorite Have anything that stands out more than anything else This is a question I often get We never have a straightforward answer to it These are the individual crazy things What has attracted the most attention over the years are individual crazy things For example the town poet in Tranemo who received a decent annual salary to write poetry about Tranemo But you also have an art exhibition where there was a million-dollar grant for an art exhibition in the forest There were only mushrooms and fungi as the audience It catches the eye You have a science project where a group of adults They also received a million-dollar grant to run around in the forest and think like a witch There the scientific conclusion was that if trolls had existed But they don't so the witch probably wouldn't have messed up the nature That's when taxpayers pay the money You now have the Skåne region and the cloned fir is quite a story How did the cloned fir do I read in SVT that Old Chico would get eternal life I asked myself two questions First of all who the hell is Old Chico Second how much does this cost It is the oldest pine in the world that has become that in Dalarna because it probably thrives there Then one would give it quote eternal life in Malmö's new hospital area and would then install it in a glass cylinder It was forced to withstand light and temperature It was almost poetically just The reason was that it would receive eternal life and care at Malmö's new hospital Three weeks later this fir withered He killed it It went wrong at every step That story is very tragicomical This was Sweden's oldest pine Was it the whole grain or was it a sprout It was a sprout of that They have cloned it I think they're on their third or fourth attempt for that fading path I am still enjoying a carefree and tax-free life Yes exactly Toppen Have you read poetry from and about Tranemo I have I hate to say it but it doesn' t seem to be the funniest place He wrote poetry among other things about a concrete factory an ICA store and the municipal archive I have listened to them I don't want to comment on the height of the building but it was just so-so Do you have a favorite among these institutions in Tranemo It was pretty fun when he was at the factory for then he had a vest and a tool belt and such It was the most aesthetically pleasing clip I would say