Minister of higher education resigns over ethical breaches

Minister of Research and Higher Education Ola Borten Moe announced his resignation on 22 July, admitting to breaching government’s integrity rules amid dramatic disclosures of what may amount to insider trading of bonds – a charge he denies – in the Norwegian aerospace and defence company Kongsberg Gruppen ASA (Kongsberg group).

Borten Moe also resigned as deputy leader of the Center Party and said he would not seek re-election to parliament at the next general election in 2025.

At the press conference at which he announced he would step down, the former minister admitted to violating the governmental rules of conduct governing conflicts of interest by participating in January in a government meeting at which a contract worth NOK2.6 billion (US$257 million) with ammunition manufacturer Nammo was agreed. The contract was later expanded and is today worth NOK4 billion.

The week before the meeting, Borten Moe purchased bonds worth more than NOK400 000 in the Kongsberg group, which owns a 25% share in Nammo.

Borten Moe also broke the rules of conduct when on 30 March he attended a meeting of the government at which the expansion of the contract with Nammo was decided.

“It means that I have put myself in a difficult situation which is embarrassing, for which I am very sorry and for which I apologise profusely,” Borten Moe said in an interview with Dagens Næringsliv.

He is also under investigation for other purchases of bonds over the past year that are in potential conflict with governmental regulations.

Økokrim, the National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime, has announced it will investigate Borten Moe for any potential wrongdoing, a charge he denies.

Borton Moe told Dagens Næringsliv that he thought that the companies he bought shares in operated outside the areas for which he has had constitutional responsibility as minister for research and higher education.

“I did not think about the government making decisions that concern these companies directly and indirectly,” he said.

Denying that insider trading had taken place, he told Dagens Næringsliv that he had “no information that was not publicly available at the time when I bought the shares”.

Nepotism allegations

Borten Moe has also been caught up in recent allegations of nepotism concerning the appointment in 2021 of a longstanding friend to the board of the Norwegian Institution for International Affairs.

Borten Moe said he had asked the ministry to judge his actions in making the board appointment. However, he declined to publish the ministry’s evaluation.

In June Khrono quoted Jan Erik Grindheim, professor in the Department of Business, Strategy and Political Sciences at the University of South Eastern Norway, who argued in relation to the conflict of interest allegations that: “if you have participated in someone’s wedding, you are close”.

Taking up the issue last week with University World News, Grindheim said: “The question I was asked by Khrono’s journalist was: if you have been at each other’s weddings, and a guest at a 40th anniversary party, are you then too close with each other when issues like this appear?

“My answer was ‘yes!’ But colleagues disagree and think it has to be even closer than this for a potential conflict of interests.

“My question then was: if there was room for doubt, was the issue investigated and thoroughly discussed by civil servants in the ministry?”

According to the journalist from Khrono, Grindheim said: “yes, but the ministry would not release the information about these internal investigations and discussions, neither to Khrono nor to the business newspaper DN”.

“My question then was: Why not? If nothing is wrong – according to the ministry – why not release the results of the internal investigations? If you don´t do that, people will of course get suspicious and think that something is wrong.

“As a political scientist, specialising in public administration and Norwegian politics, I would say that the ministry in this case is obliged to release such information if it does not incriminate or in any other way can hurt the persons involved,” Grindheim said.

Trust deficit

The news of his role in buying bonds in the Kongsberg group was published by the business newsletter E24 on the morning of 21 July. By noon, several newspapers were carrying the story and several of them called for his resignation. At that point Borten Moe declined to resign, saying he had the “trust of the PM” and that he wanted to continue as minister “to sort out the case he himself had created”.

However, by the time of the press conference at 17.15pm it was clear that the PM’s confidence was lost.

In the lead-up to his resignation, Siri Gloppen, professor of political science at the University of Bergen, criticised Borten Moe, arguing on Facebook that the case was “MUCH more serious than the other cases of conflict of interest we have seen.

“This case is about clear and premeditated breaks of regulations for one’s own (potentially enormous) profit. Or ‘abuse of a public position for private profit’ which is the most common definition of political corruption. If Ola Borten Moe is sitting as minister after this it will totally undermine the trust for Jonas Gahr Støre [PM] and the government”.

Dag-Inge Ulstein, a member of the Christian Democrats, voiced the concerns of many others when he said: “That a government minister should invest in weapons and ammunition shares in the middle of a war is as bad as it can be.”

The coalition government of labour and centre parties has, since it was established in 2021, seen four ministers caught up in misconduct allegations. The Borten Moe case is arguably the most damaging.

In the last few weeks, Labour Party minister Anette Trettebergstuen resigned over her appointment of friends to positions within the public sector for which she was responsible, and Tonje Brenna, also a Labour minister, has admitted to appointing a friend to the board of a foundation that receives funding from her ministry.

A controversial figure

Professor Emeritus Ivar Bleiklie at the University of Bergen, who is an expert on higher education governance and has studied Norwegian higher education and research policies since the early 1990s, told University World News the resignation of Higher Education Minister Borten Moe can be analysed from several perspectives.

“The first is the context of him being the third minister to run into trouble related to ethical issues in the last few weeks,” he said. “On two occasions Borten Moe bought shares just days before the contracts were awarded. This raises the issue of possible insider trading, making his case more serious than the former two.

“The second perspective is on the actions of an experienced senior politician with a decades-long political career in parliament and various government positions. His claim that he honestly believed that he was qualified to take part in the government decisions on the contracts with the weapons producer is mind boggling. Borten Moe also claims that he had no knowledge of the government contracts when he bought the shares,” he said.

“This claim notwithstanding, the police have already declared that the issue of possible insider trading will be subject to criminal investigation.

“Earlier this year the media brought attention to Borten Moe’s appointment of ‘an old acquaintance’ to the board of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in December 2021. The Ministry of Education considered him impartial in the issue but has refused to disclose the reasons for this,” he added.

“Finally, Borten Moe’s role in higher education and research policy has been controversial and elements of it, such as his reorganisation of the research council and his removal of support for international students outside the EU/EEA-area, have been met with strong resistance from the sector.

“Other elements, such as the ‘decentralisation’ policies, the push against too much use of English in research and teaching are, at least in the short term, more symbolic, but still have caused much debate. Still other reforms, such as in applied professional education, are still in the making. He has dubbed his policies ‘a total make-over’ of public higher education and research,” he said.

“The prime minister has declared that his policies will be continued. While it remains to be seen which reform proposals the government will promote, there is hope that a new minister might be less hostile towards the sector and more inclined towards dialogue with its institutions and representatives. The sector awaits the appointment of a new minister with hope and apprehension”.

Peter Frølich, head of the parliament’s control and constitution committee, said in a press release that the ‘competency question’ surrounding Borten Moe is “not over”.

“Due to the seriousness of the case, it was right and necessary to resign. These rules exist to protect trust in political decisions and our democracy”, he said, adding that the control and constitution committee would meet on 27 July to discuss the case and he would ask for a complete written report from Borten Moe.

Damage to Norwegian science

Nils Christian Stenseth, professor of ecology and evolution at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis at the University of Oslo, said Borten Moe’s actions showed a complete lack of appropriate judgement.

“Judging his many policy decisions over the past year or so makes me feel that his total lack of proper judgement when it comes to his private matters might indeed have been a more general lack of proper judgement,” he said.

“He claims that many of his policy decisions are to strengthen the Norwegian science community – whereas in actual fact they have weakened the Norwegian science community. He has indeed been very damaging to the Norwegian science community – not the least in the sense of making the Norwegian science community appear as an unpredictable and unreliable partner.”

Stenseth said the country needed close interaction with the international scientific community and Borten Moe had “made this very difficult”.

“Over my 50 years as an active scientist, I have never seen a minister having done so much harm to the Norwegian scientific community. Of course, he is not alone in the government – but I’ve over the years seen many ministers of science having fought much more successfully for curiosity-driven science – the core of fundamental and basic science.”

Stenseth said Borten Moe also “often misrepresents” reality.

“It was his ministry that reduced the curiosity-driven research programmes in Norway by around NOK1.6 billion … It was the parliament that brought back the NOK1.6 billion to the curiosity-driven research programmes – after which he [Borten Moe] (wrongly) claimed that it was him and his ministry that did this; it wasn’t – it was the parliament who corrected his mistakes!”

Professor Ole Petter Ottersen, former rector of the University of Oslo and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and now acting secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, told University World News that he had followed the development of the Norwegian government’s policies “at a distance” until March this year when he returned from Sweden.

However, he said he was “close enough to see how unwise and unforeseen political decisions have undermined long term efforts to bolster Norway’s international standing in research and higher education”.

Diversity, solidarity and stability

“There are three keywords that should guide governance of academia: diversity, solidarity, and stability,” Ottersen told University World News. “A minister for research and higher education should duly respect each of these.

“Introducing tuition fees for students from third countries, suspending the NORPART programme and implementing other elements of the ‘total makeover plan’ not only weaken our ties with low- and middle-income countries but reduce the richness of perspectives that nurtures quality and that is essential for grappling with the complex global challenges of our time.

“And more than any other sector, the university sector depends on predictability and stability. Ideas often take decades to develop and mature, and careers are exquisitely sensitive to haphazard changes in funding opportunities.

“Obviously, respect and trust must go both ways: we as scientists must respect the governance system that we are part of. However, this respect is contingent on a constructive dialogue between academia and political decision makers.

“New decisions – such as the decisions on tuition fees and the NORPART program – were implemented without due discussion and forewarning. This tells us that there is an urgent need for a better dialogue between the ministry and the university sector. With a new political leadership there is hope that such a dialogue will be introduced.”

Professor Bjørn Stensaker, vice-rector for education at the University of Oslo echoed Ottersen’s concern around instability.

“It has been some turbulent years, and a lot of the policies and policy initiatives he took have not yet been finalised. The new legal framework for higher education has not been decided upon, the funding model for higher education is still lacking important details, and the evaluation of the research system has not even begun. This leaves more questions than answers at the moment,” he told University World News.

“My personal wish is for more predictability for the sector. There is absolutely no doubt that our environment is changing, and we as universities are trying hard to adjust to new student needs and societal expectations. Universities do not always need big policy reforms to change, we are actually capable of adapting ourselves if we are given the trust to do so.”