Swedes stand by King Carl Gustaf amid shocking sex scandal
Monarch alleged to have had orgies, frequented Mafia-run clubs
By Harriet Alexander, Daily Telegraph
Royal pair vouch for Scouts in Canada
LONDON - Sweden has been shocked by revelations about its quietly dignified king.
Five months ago, the Swedish royal family was the toast of Europe. All eyes were trained on Stockholm as the glamorous Crown Princess Victoria wed her long-time boyfriend in a fairytale ceremony, and the world's press clamoured for a glimpse of the elegant Swedish royals and their regal guests.
Now the international media is again camped outside the gates of Stockholm's Drottningholm Palace - but this time for far less congratulatory reason.
Revelations last week that the king of Sweden once enjoyed romps in seedy nightclubs owned by shadowy underworld figures have eclipsed the sparkle of July's wedding. King Carl XVI Gustaf, the stern-looking, bespectacled monarch who is honorary chairman of the World Scout Foundation, has found himself thrust uncomfortably in the spotlight following the publication of an unflinching book, Carl XVI Gustaf: The Reluctant Monarch, which catalogues his past predilection for wild, alcohol-fuelled orgies and naked jacuzzi parties with models.
The book has caused uproar and dominated the country's media, leading to nationwide soul-searching about the 64-year-old king's role, reputation and right to privacy.
"Strip clubs, illegal clubs, rented ladies who are naked under their fur coats. Women were simply desserts, used as sweets to be served with the coffee," wrote Katrine Kielos in the daily Aftonbladet newspaper.
"The royal family has always been viewed as an august, fabulous family. But these allegations are so grave that our trust in them is seriously damaged," said Jenny Madestam, a political analyst. "The King is not even denying it."
Indeed, the King's bizarre press conference on Thursday - held in a forest after an elk hunt - only served to fan the flames of interest.
"I have spoken with my family and the queen and we choose to turn the page and move forward because, as I understand, these are things that happened a long time ago," he said - standing in a field, still dressed in his wax jacket and hunting clothes, among a sea of camera crews and reporters.
His handling of the book's publication has shocked some observers.
"Now is the time for the king to be quiet and give no comments. Instead, he says yes to a press conference in the middle of the forest where anything can happen. It is like playing Russian roulette," said Paul Ronge, a PR expert, in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
"His statement can be interpreted as a confession. It is beneath his dignity to even comment on a gossip book about his private life. Now the plug is gone and the papers can print page after page with material from the book.
"For the royal court to handle the issue like kindergarten behaviour, without responsibility is very serious."
Indeed, the allegations the king frequented Mafia-run clubs and used the state police to hide the evidence are extremely serious.
The book's authors, Thomas Sjöberg, Tove Meyer and Deanne Rauscher, spent two years unpicking the complicated story behind the throne.
"He was only 27 when he took office, in the midst of his bachelor years, with girls, booze and 'the lads'," they wrote.
"Then he suddenly became king, and had to promise the people to be a loving father. It was a totally unreasonable promise that he stood and gave in the state room."
Sjöberg, a leading interviewer and investigative journalist, originally decided to look into the rumours of a dark private life that had long been muttered in Swedish society - enlisting the help of researcher Tove Meyer and former social worker Deanne Rauscher.
Together they set about lifting the veil of secrecy that hung over the palace.
"That was what I originally wanted to find out: how could such a young king handle a role he has not been allowed to grow into?" Sjöberg said.
It was Rauscher who interviewed many of the women who had been involved with the king.
From her two-bedroom antique-filled flat in Stockholm's upmarket Östermalm area, Rauscher pieced together the testimonies of the women who had partied with the playboy monarch - including Camilla Henemark, a Swedish-Nigerian pop singer and model who had a year-long affair with the king in the late 1990s.
The authors write that the king "had fallen in love like a teenager" and that the queen, his wife since 1976, knew about the affair but was powerless to stop it.
In an interview before her relationship with the king was known, Henemark spoke of her spiral into depression around the end of the affair.
"It had been a party all the time and lots of champagne and money," she said.
When her modelling and pop career faded, she said: "I became distant and drank constantly. I sank deeper and deeper into depression and hated the world.
"I was thinking about suicide."
Last week Sjöberg and Rauscher took to a houseboat, sheltering one of the women who revealed details of her trysts with the king.
"It has been very stressful," Rauscher told The Sunday Telegraph.
The authors also uncovered evidence of how a Serbian gangster, Mille Markovic, hosted parties for the king and his friends at an underground club in Stockholm, below the National Police Department.
Markovic described how the club had a jacuzzi inside, and the girls invited to the parties "threw off their clothes and sat in the men's laps."
In the evenings the women were assigned their rooms. "It was not formally mandatory, but there were name signs on the doors showing who was going to sleep with whom," said one of the women.
Markovic told a Swedish newspaper: "I've got live evidence. The entire world will see. This is no fake but real facts. I can prove every single thing."
But perhaps one of the most intriguing elements of the scandal, for those outside the Scandanavian country, is how the Swedish population has reacted.
Over 80 per cent say the lurid allegations have not changed their perception of the king - and almost 50 per cent say that it is wrong for journalists to look into the private lives of their royal family.
Upon hearing about the book, producers an investigative news program met with the authors - only to decide they weren't interested in investigating the royal family.
Thomas Sjöberg, the book's author, admits the royal family is seen as being above criticism.
"If it would have been the PM, he would be forced to resign the following day," he said.
"There would be a public outcry, severe political consequences for Sweden, political chaos and a constitutional crisis."
But despite the media whirlwind, Swedes seem very relaxed about their head of state's behaviour.
"All the negative PR experts commenting on the king's meeting with the press are totally wrong," said Brita Svensson, a royal correspondent.
"It was no fiasco, no disaster, not unprofessional nor a huge embarrassment. It was completely brilliant. Carl XVI Gustaf was himself.
"The king is ruling. Half of all Swedes say they have very good or good faith in the king. That is a sensational result for a 'Reluctant Monarch'."
The Montreal Gazette
Revealed: How the King of Sweden enjoyed wild sex parties with strippers - and a lengthy affair with a buxom model
By Geoffrey Levy and Marcus Oscarsson
Last updated at 10:26 AM on 8th November 2010
To the world at large, King Carl Gustaf of Sweden is the perfect 21st-century monarch. A charming man of quiet dignity, loved by his people as an ordinary family man, his main hobby is Scouting.
His only acknowledgement of a racier world is the stable of fast cars he enjoys driving. As for his 34 years of marriage with Queen Silvia, this is held up in libidinous Sweden as a wonderful example of what marriage should be.
At least, that’s how it was. But suddenly the 64-year-old King’s bespectacled image of almost dull respectability has undergone a remarkable transformation.
Transformation: A new biography of King Gustaf of Sweden shows that he is a habituee of wild sex parties involving strippers
In a new biography of the King — who is our own Queen Elizabeth’s third cousin — he emerges as an habituee of wild sex parties involving strippers, sometimes hosted by an infamous Mafia boss in a Stockholm club.
Perhaps most damaging of all is the allegation that, over many years, he has been protected by the Swedish secret service, Sapo, hoovering up embarrassing material in his wake and pressuring women to hand over compromising pictures.
As the book, The Reluctant Monarch, sold out its entire 20,000 initial print in Swedish bookshops yesterday, this normally unshockable country was shaken by the startling details amassed by its three investigative authors about the secret life their King has apparently been leading.
What emerges is a monarch who has spent a fortune on sex parties and strip clubs.
At one Stockholm club elaborate dinners were followed by liaisons in a communal whirlpool with scantily clad women, some of them, it seems, aspiring models.
Several women claim they had sex with the King. Indeed, after one big dinner, he is said to have enjoyed sex with two women at the same time
Sometimes, according to the book, the girls would ‘throw off their clothes and sit in the men’s laps’.
According to the Mafia-linked club owner Mille Markovic, who is quoted in the book, he liked having the King as a customer because it minimised the possibility of police raids.
Several women interviewed for the book claim they had sex with the King. Indeed, after one big dinner celebrating a successful elk hunt, he is said to have enjoyed sex with two women at the same time.
At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where the King of Sweden was inevitably a VIP guest, he is said to have spent $10,000 (£7,000) in the Gold Club nightclub, including two hours in a room alone with one of the strippers.
In some instances, Sapo agents have been used to search the homes of women in order to confiscate pictures and negatives taken at the King’s private parties.
‘If the rolls of film and pictures aren’t turned over, some unpleasant things will happen,’ the book startlingly claims.
No fewer than 14 pages are given over to an alleged lengthy affair he had with Camilla Henemark, the beautiful Swedish singer and model whose father was Nigerian and mother Swedish.
Lengthy affair: 14 pages of the book are devoted to the relationship the King is alleged to have had with Camilla Henemark, a singer and model
Her response to the revelations yesterday was not to deny them but merely to say her lawyer had advised her ‘not to give any comments’.
The book claims that Queen Silvia was aware of this affair but was helpless as the King ‘had fallen in love like a teenager and, on one occasion, the King and Henemark were talking about leaving for a distant island, like Marlon Brando in Tetiaroa in French Polynesia, where they planned to live on coconuts’.
To Swedes, it is scarcely imaginable that this comfortable man, so correct in his role, so enthusiastic about Scouting as the youth movement’s world chairman and a regular visitor to jamborees, could even contemplate such a sordid secret life.
Typically, he delighted his subjects some years ago with a remark showing his disapproval of the clubbing of baby seals in neighbouring Norway.
He said that a prime minister who couldn’t take care of baby seals couldn’t be very good at taking care of his country.
Facing questions: The King held a news conference in Hunneberg yesterday, during which he made a short comment about the book
There has always been much sympathy for him, since it emerged that he is dyslexic and finds reading and writing difficult.
Added to this was considerable admiration for the way he overcame the challenges he faced as a child.
He was just seven months old when his father was killed in a car crash. This made him heir to his grandfather, King Gustaf. He was 27 when he became King.
King Carl Gustaf has talked of the sadness of growing up without knowing his father. His elder sister, Princess Birgitta, has said they were brought up in a royal house of severe strictness where ‘children’s questions were met with silence, children’s anxiety and fear with the same silence’.
It is because they know this story of the King’s wretched childhood that his ‘happy’ marriage has been such a significant part of the warmth shown by his subjects during his 37-year reign.
‘It’s terrible that this has all come out,’ says a courtier. ‘But the Queen is a trooper. She will show nothing.’
Ironically, it was at another Olympic Games — in Munich in 1972 — that he met Silvia Sommerlath, an interpreter with a German father and Brazilian mother. She was working as an official Games hostess.
They married in Stockholm Cathedral in 1976 and, until now, nothing has ever indicated anything but contentment in the marriage.
In fact, recent episodes rocking the royal household, concerning their children, made them seem closer and more devoted to each other than ever.
First, their son Prince Carl Philip ended a decade-long romance with his girlfriend and started seeing Sofia Hellqvist, a reality TV show model who has posed wearing nothing but a python and a G-string.
Then it emerged their younger daughter Princess Madeleine, 28 — once seen as a possible bride for Prince William — had pulled her engagement ring off her finger, cancelled her wedding to her dashing lawyer boyfriend of eight years, Jonas Bergstrom, and flown in tears to New York, where she remains.
The reason: a blonde Swedish photography student had disclosed that she had sex with the putative prince after meeting him in a Swedish ski resort.
Close and devoted: The King with his family in 2005, from left: Prince Carl Philip, Crown Princess Victoria, Queen Silvia and (far right) Princess Madeleine
‘We were intimate — he followed me home in a taxi at four o’clock in the morning,’ she told a Norweigian magazine. ‘I’m sorry for Madeleine for having an unfaithful man.’
Within hours, the royal palace had issued a statement saying the Princess’s engagement was off.
Nor was the mood in the family improved by their eldest child, Princess Victoria, 33. She is the heir to the throne, rather than her younger brother, because of a change in the law insisted on by their father, which enables the eldest to inherit, whatever their sex.
This very modern King wanted to be sure that no daughter of his would be passed over for the throne, as were his own four older sisters.
In June, the future Queen shocked her parents (and horrified royal courtiers) by marrying the man who had been her personal trainer for eight years. The genial chap from the provinces is now Prince Westling.Through all these family dramas, no one has suffered more than Queen Silvia. First her children — now her husband.
‘It’s terrible that this has all come out,’ says a courtier. ‘But the Queen is a trooper. She will show nothing.’
Revelations: Copies of the controversial book, 'Carl XVI Gustaf: The Unwilling Monarch' at a book store in Stockholm
Meanwhile, King Carl will, in four weeks’ time at Stockholm Concert Hall, perform as ever his annual duty of handing out the awards to this year’s Nobel Prize winners.
In the tradition of the awards, he will say nothing, leaving the speeches on this great occasion to the recipients.
Yesterday he wasn’t very talkative either, when he faced questions about the book, after he’d enjoyed a gathering with friends of a more publicised kind — shooting elk.
He had not read the book ‘yet’, he said, when he emerged from the forest, but he understood what it contained.
‘I have spoken with my family and the Queen and we choose to turn the page ... and move forward because, as I understand, these are things that happened a long time ago,’ he said.
That may be so, but can things ever be the same again between King Carl Gustaf and his people?
Italian PM tries to laugh off scandal
Uses homophobic quip to deflect criticism
By FRANCOISE KADRI, AFP November 3, 2010 ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attempted to laugh off a potentially damaging sex scandal with a homophobic joke yesterday, as Italy's political crisis deepens and his popularity ratings plunge.
"I'm always working flat out and sometimes I look at beautiful women. ... It's better to be passionate about beautiful women than to be gay," Berlusconi said in a speech at the opening of a motorcycle show in Milan.
Prosecutors have opened an inquiry into allegations by a teenager that she was paid to attend raunchy parties hosted by Berlusconi at his villa last year, when she was under 18, Italian newspapers reported in recent days.
Berlusconi is also accused of making a call to a police station in Milan to have the girl released after she was arrested for theft.
In his speech, Berlusconi said he acted out of "solidarity" with the girl.
Berlusconi's lawyers have strongly denied any sexual relationship between the Italian leader and the girl, Karima El Mahroug, who turned 18 yesterday.
His comments were "not just homophobic but also a miserable attempt to distract attention away from the latest scandal involving an underage girl," said Donatella Ferranti, a leader of the main opposition Democratic Party.
Marc Lazar, a French academic specializing in Italian politics, agreed.
The joke was "an implicit wink to Italian machos to hide something far more serious: using his power as head of the government to get a young girl out of jail despite her having been detained for theft," said Lazar, a professor of politics at LUISS, a university in Rome.
The quip itself also caused widespread offence. The gay rights group Arcigay said Berlusconi's remarks were "gratuitous and vulgar and offensive not just to homosexuals but also to women."
Berlusconi "still lives in the Stone Age," said former anti-corruption judge Antonio Di Pietro, who heads the Italy of Values opposition party.
Even Berlusconi loyalist Mara Carfagna, Italy's equal opportunities minister, said the Italian leader should "refrain" from such comments.
Pierluigi Bersani, leader of the Democratic Party, said there had been a "moral regression in the country" under Berlusconi.
Bersani has already called for Berlusconi's resignation, but most experts agreed that was unlikely to happen despite the scandal falling at a time when Berlusconi's ruling coalition is being riven by infighting.
At yesterday's motorcycle show, Berlusconi said he was sure the government "has a majority and will go ahead until the next parliament" in 2013.
On Monday, Berlusconi's People of Freedom Party challenged the Italian prime minister's arch-rival Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of parliament, to either stop supporting the government and trigger new elections or stop criticizing it.