scandal in norway
Party leader steals sunglasses at airport and is filmed in the process
A thoughtless squeezing into an airport shop cost Norwegian party leader Björnar Moxnes (41) his career: he was caught shoplifting and must now resign.
Published24. July 2023, 3:52 pm
Björnar Moxnes tried on a pair of glasses…
Screenshot Youtube/ Dagbladet
…which he obviously liked.
Screenshot Youtube/ Dagbladet
So he slipped them discreetly into his luggage…
Screenshot Youtube/ Dagbladet
… and then put it in his jacket pocket.
Screenshot Youtube/ Dagbladet
Since 2017, the “Red Party” has been represented by Björnar Moxnes in the Norwegian Storting Parliament.
Stortinget
Norwegian politician Björnar Moxnes ruined his career after eleven years at the helm of Rödt.
The reason: He stole a pair of sunglasses at Oslo airport and got caught doing it.
It was particularly serious that he failed to tell the truth about the incident.
Norway’s left-wing Rödt party needs to find a new leader: previous party leader Björnar Moxnes announced his resignation on Monday after eleven years in office.
The parting comes as no surprise – and it probably wasn’t entirely voluntary. Because the 41-year-old man made a huge mistake and left a pair of sunglasses hanging around Oslo airport. When he and his girlfriend were at a Hugo Boss store there on June 16, he tried on the glasses and first put them in his travel bag on the luggage trolley. As he walked through the shop, he discreetly slipped his glasses, worth about 100 francs, into his left breast pocket.
Caught by the store detective
What he had no idea: a surveillance camera captured the theft, Björnar Moxnes was stopped in front of the store by a store detective and reported. He had to pay a fine of around 250 francs. At the request of the Norwegian media, which learned of the story, the camera footage was released due to his status as a public figure and the case became public.
To make matters worse for Björnar Moxnes – who called in sick after the headlines – he changed his version of the theft several times after the fact. First, he said he “forgot” to pay for the glasses and “discovered” them in his bag outside the store. But he had already removed the price tag and finally had to admit that he had pocketed the glasses on purpose.
Lying has more consequences than theft itself.
His dishonesty was then interpreted as more serious than the theft itself: «For me, the worst thing is not the theft itself, but the subsequent changes in history. I think it will be difficult to campaign with this,” says Björn Ove Hersdal of the Labor Party.
Now Moxnes drew the consequences and tendered his resignation as leader of Rödt’s party (German: the Red Party).
He was sorry on social media. “It’s been an incredibly beautiful journey over eleven years,” he wrote on Facebook, “and I’d like to talk more about that, but first about the big deal of the summer: I took these sunglasses with me from the store in Gardemoen.” And again: “I made a big mistake and made it worse by the way I handled it.”
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