The Swedish Supreme Court has ruled to uphold the disbarring of a female lawyer who maintained a romantic relationship with a known gang leader she represented as a public defender.
The female lawyer, who is married, was initially disbarred by the Swedish Bar Association after being reported by the chief prosecutor in Gävle for being romantically involved with the gang leader.
“By taking on the mission of being a public defender for a person despite having a close personal relationship, the attorney did not uphold the requirement of independence and integrity,” the Supreme Court wrote in its ruling, Expressen reports.
“I fell in love,” the lawyer told police, suggesting she was “blinded”.
She appealed the move by the Bar Association to the Supreme Court, but they supported the move to ban her from practising law.
On top of the woman’s disbarment, her husband and three more of her relatives have been detained by police. They allegedly plotted the murder of the gang leader she was having an affair with — a relationship she thought had been secret at the time.
The case is not the first time lawyers in Sweden have become embroiled in scandal or illegal activity connected to criminal gangs in recent years.
In 2021, two migration-background lawyers were accused of leaking confidential information to members of the Vårby network, a notorious Stockholm-based drug trafficking gang.
Ekrem Güngör and Amir Amdouni allegedly used the encrypted messaging app Encrochat, which was infiltrated by French investigators in 2020. Under pseudonyms, the two allegedly helped gang members locate weapons and provided advice on how to avoid being caught by police.
Just a year later, lawyer Peter Carlström was convicted by the Halmstad District Court of tampering with evidence in a shooting case involving criminal gangs, in which he substituted a real firearm for a deactivated one in order to get an acquittal for his client.
Like Güngör and Amdouni, he also used Encrochat, conversing with his client about his plans to exchange the firearm for a deactivated one.