A 32-year-old man in Bergen has been convicted of making around 800 threats against state welfare agency NAV and his local NAV office. He called in more than 100 threats on a single day and also has threatened specific employees.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported that the threats consisted mostly of verbal abuse against the NAV employees but that he also at one point threatened to “crush the face” of one welfare worker. He also threatened to bomb a NAV office.
Norwegian authorities have claimed to be taking threats against the welfare agency more seriously after a young female worker recently was killed by a disgruntled Norwegian client at a NAV office in Oslo. The defendant in this case, however, could walk out of the Bergen courtroom as a free man, because he was sentenced to only 90 days in prison, with 50 of them set as a suspended sentence. Since he’d already served 40 days in remand custody, his actual jail time was thus seen as fulfilled. He remains on probation for the next two years.
NAV officials, meanwhile, have reported 855 welfare recipients to the police for alleged welfare fraud. Many of the recipients are charged with continuing to collect unemployment benefits even though they’d found work. The alleged fraud reportedly cost Norwegian taxpayers NOK 151 million.
newsinenglish.no staff
