Stein Lier-Hansen, once one of Norway’s most powerful men, now faces five years in prison and large compensation claims after being found guilty of serious corruption. It’s all tied to his long career representing industrial employers in labour negotiations over nearly two decades, and how the national employers’ organization NHO failed to uncover misappropriation of its funds.
Last week a district court judge in Oslo sentenced Lier-Hansen to jail for five years after he was convicted of serious corruption. The now-71-year-old Lier-Hansen was also ordered to repay NOK 10.6 million (USD 1.15 million) to his former employer, Norsk Industri (the industrial division within NHO) after being found guilty of using the organization’s money to fund everything from frequent dinners and drinks to the use of sea-planes that could land on mountain lakes in areas where Lier-Hansen went hunting.
Prosecutors had sought compensation of NOK 12 million for the employers’ group, more than what the judge granted. Lier-Hansen, meanwhile, seemed inclined to appeal both his jail term and the order to repay Norsk Industri for what the judge agreed were fraudulent expense account claims over a period of many years.
“I haven’t admitted and won’t admit that I have carried out serious corruption,” Lier-Hansen told newspaper Klassekampen after the ruling in his case was handed down. “But that’s my subjective opinion. Perhaps I don’t understand the law.”
Lier-Hansen continues to maintain that he was just doing his job as he lobbied for industrial employers and worked to keep their companies’ personnel expenses down. He had earlier worked for the Norwegian hunting and fishing federation and as a state secretary for the Labour Party in the environmental ministry before leading Norsk Industri from 2006.
As leader of a division within NHO, Norway’s national employers’ organization, his expense accounts were rarely questioned and he had great freedom to spend money on what he viewed as legitimate costs of representation. NHO, however, has recently needed to cut back on expenses itself and reduce staffing, making Lier-Hansen’s conviction for fraud over the years even more of a betrayal of his colleagues’ and NHO members’ trust.
It wasn’t until the latter half of 2023 that NHO received a warning about Lier-Hansen. Until then he’d been able to pass on expenses for hunting and fishing trips, the remote mountain cabins he’d used, restaurant meals and bar bills, for example, as the costs of doing business with those he invited out on the town or up to the mountains and elsewhere. In late 2023, Lier-Hansen left Norsk Industri and NHO with severance pay and took a new job at the environmental organization Bellona in Oslo.
An investigation into his expense accounts at Norsk Industri and NHO, though, ultimately alerted Norway’s economic crime Økokrim to the case, and an indictment of Lier-Hansen followed in April 2025. His trial began in January, when he often showed up in the courtroom unshaven and casually dressed.
He eventually made some admissions of misusing Norsk Industri’s funds, for example how one of several hunting trips to Sweden in 2022, when the pandemic was winding down, wasn’t “relevant” for Norsk Industri. “That trip shouldn’t have been made, it should have been cancelled,” he testified in court.
Other charges for which he’s been convicted were more serious, and involved how Lier-Hansen not only got his employer to pay for much of his hunting, fishing, dining and drinking but also enriched himself at Norsk Industri’s expense. The actual corruption charge involves kickbacks from others that allegedly left Lier-Hansen with NOK 1.9 million. He continues to deny that.
Two others were also charged in the case, one involving a man in Trøndelag who allegedly provided Lier-Hansen with fictitious invoices amounting to NOK 1.85 million and a man from Buskerud who allegedly did the same with invoices totalling NOK 2.06 million. Lier-Hansen was also accused of filing expense claims for dinners he had with people who later claimed they hadn’t been at the table.
Lier-Hansen also admitted during the course of his lengthy trial last winter to claiming reimbursement from Norsk Industri/NHO for a family sightseeing trip, a Christmas bird-hunting trip in Sweden with his wife, even salmon-fishing trips to Alta that cost Norsk Industri NOK 380,000 that were reported to be with “guests that were relevant for following up EU carbon compensation issues.”
When Lier-Hansen left Norsk Industri in 2023 he received severance pay that its chairman Ståle Kyllingstad later admitted shouldn’t have been paid out. The organization demanded NOK 12 million in reimbursement from Lier-Hansen, and the court approved NOK 10.6 million.
Lier-Hansen admits that the court didn’t believe him and indicated that he’ll try again in an appeal. Another trial may follow and Professor Petter Gottschalk at business school NHH in Oslo predicts an appeals court judge will reduce Lier-Hansen’s prison term, that Norway’s Supreme Court will refuse to hear another appeal and that Lier-Hansen will probably only have to spend two-thirds of a reduced prison term in jail. It also remains unclear whether Lier-Hansen will ever repay the money he illegally extracted from the organization.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
