The Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society (MUCF) paid out millions of Swedish kronor to ethnic associations last year.
MUCF paid out almost 19 million Swedish kronor (£1.7 million /$2.3 million) to 47 different ethnic minority associations during 2020. While the agency claims that 51 per cent of the members must be of foreign background, Statistics Sweden has previously announced it is illegal to keep such ethnic data.
According to a report from Nyheter Idag, the groups must also have at least 1,000 active paying members, have at least five local associations, be operational in at least three counties, and the members partially pay for their own activities.
The Bosnian-Herzegovinian National Association of Sweden based in Norrkoping received the largest grant of 862,753 kronor, followed by the Serbian National Association of Sweden, and the Kurdish Federation of Sweden.
Several Somali groups also received government cash, including the Somali National Association, located in the no-go Stockholm suburb of Kista, and the Somaliland National Association of Sweden, based in Uppsala.
In its 2020 report, the MUCF stated that it wanted to see more resources to audit grants for associations and review how the money is being used.
In the past, Swedish government money was found to have been spent on groups directly tied to extremist ideologies such as radical Islamic extremism. A report from August of last year claimed the country gave as much as 1.2 billion Swedish kronor (£104 million/$137 million) to groups with radical connections in the last five years.
In June 2020, Sweden’s top administrative court upheld an order for a Muslim youth group, Sveriges Unga Muslimer (SUM/Sweden’s Young Muslims), to repay around 1.4 million Swedish Krona (£119,000/$149,000) because the group was found to not “respect the ideas of democracy”.
Along with radical groups, Swedish taxpayer money also managed to flow directly to members of Islamic State, largely through welfare, child allowance, and education funding after they had left Sweden to join the terror group in the Middle East.