STOCKHOLM, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A Swedish appeals court on Monday found former national security adviser Henrik Landerholm, a friend of the prime minister, guilty of mishandling secret information, overturning a lower court ruling.
The case, involving documents left at a hotel in 2023, has embarrassed Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson as it unfolded against the backdrop of a deepening security crisis in the Baltic Sea region following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Kristersson submitted his resignation after his right-wing government lost its parliamentary majority in a general election in September, but he is leading a caretaker government while a new government is being formed.
Last year, a district court found Landerholm not guilty, saying he had been negligent, but not gravely.
"Unlike the district court ... the court of appeal finds that the man disclosed the information contained in the documents through gross negligence," the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm said in a statement.
"The only reasonable explanation for the man having left the documents behind is that he was quite careless when emptying the safe-deposit box where he had kept them," it said.
The appeals court fined Landerholm, Sweden's first national security adviser, 52,000 Swedish crowns ($5,247).
Landerholm, who has pleaded not guilty, stepped down in January 2025 after the investigations began.
His defence lawyer was not immediately available for comment and Landerholm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
($1 = 9.9106 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik and Barbara Lewis)
