'Secret' Swedish police data sold by criminals

Supposedly secret police lists containing details about Sweden’s most dangerous criminals are up for sale across the country among members of the Swedish underworld.

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The documents have apparently been leaked from the Stockholm police's Criminal Investigation Department.

“It’s disgraceful that they've come out and we’ve started an preliminary investigation,” said department head Margareta Linderoth to the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

The lists, known as the Alcatraz List and Nova List, contain a wide-range of information about Sweden’s toughest criminals, there associations to one another, as well a details about their relationships with family members, acquaintances, and girlfriends.

The Alcatraz List is the product of a nationwide cooperative effort between other Criminal Investigation Departments, the Swedish security service Säpo, and the Swedish Prosecution Authority (Åklagarmyndigheten).

The Nova List deals primarily with organized criminals in the Stockholm area and is named after the Nova Group, a unit of the Stockholm police department focused on counteracting the growth of organized crime.

Most of the people on the two lists have strong connections to criminal networks. Several of them are involved in ongoing gang wars, and a number of people on the lists have been murdered.

It remains unclear exactly how much off the information on the lists has been leaked. Among details from the lists known by police to have come out are alternative addresses and telephone numbers as well as what type of vehicles people on the list drive.

Linderoth confirmed that information from the lists is being sold to criminal across the country. She said that the lists came out as a result of criminal activity and that no police officers are suspected of being invovled.

Nor does she believe the disclosure has damaged the police’s work.

“It’s not good, but it’s a living document and now that we know about it can we restructure things,” she told DN.