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Carl Bildt Defends Lundin Oil’s Role as Sudan Trial Puts the Past Back on the Record

Former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister Carl Bildt told a Stockholm court that Lundin Oil was “a positive force” in Sudan, as he testified in the long-running war crimes case surrounding the company’s operations during the country’s civil war.

Appearing as a witness on Thursday, Bildt addressed his time as a board member of Lundin Oil between 2000 and 2006, a period now under intense scrutiny. The trial centers on allegations that the company aided Sudan’s regime in forcibly displacing civilians to clear the way for oil exploration in the early 2000s. Former executives Ian Lundin and Alex Schneiter are charged with complicity in gross violations of international law, accusations they strongly deny.

Bildt told the court he accepted the board role because he found the company interesting and believed his political experience could be useful, particularly given how closely energy and geopolitics are intertwined. At the same time, he emphasized that his knowledge of Sudan itself was limited. He said he had never visited the country and described the Lundin project as one among many international engagements competing for his attention at the time.

Prosecutors pressed Bildt on what he knew about the conflict in southern Sudan, including emails he sent in 2001 warning of indiscriminate bombings by the government. The aim, prosecutors said, was to establish that senior figures linked to the company were aware of the violence surrounding its operations.

Throughout his testimony, Bildt maintained that Lundin Oil contributed positively to the region, a claim sharply contested by prosecutors and human rights organizations. The case, which began in 2023, has already been marked by allegations of witness intimidation and has become one of the most consequential corporate accountability trials in modern Swedish legal history.

Stress-related mental illness remains stubbornly high across Sweden’s care, education, and social services sectors, with women bearing the brunt. A new report from the Social Insurance Agency paints a familiar but increasingly urgent picture: too many essential workers are off sick, and the system is paying the price.

According to the agency’s annual report released today, 92,100 people were on sick leave for psychiatric diagnoses—primarily stress, anxiety, and depression—in September 2025. That figure is 11 percent higher than in 2019 and sits at historically elevated levels. While there has been a modest 3 percent decline over the past year, the agency’s Director General, Nils Öberg, is clear-eyed about its significance: this is not a turning point, just a small dip on an uncomfortably high plateau.

Roughly 70 percent of these sick-leave cases involve women, with the highest rates found in female-dominated, people-facing professions within healthcare, schools, and elder care. These are also the sectors where staffing shortages, high workloads, and difficult working conditions are most acute. Öberg argues that this represents an “unnecessary loss” of critical skills at a time when Sweden’s welfare system can least afford it, noting that many of these absences could have been prevented with better working environments.

The economic impact is substantial. Stress-related mental illness accounted for 22 percent of all sickness benefit costs in 2024—nearly SEK 10 billion. Because psychiatric sick leave tends to last longer than other diagnoses, the costs accumulate quickly. Öberg estimates that cutting these cases in half would free up billions that could be reinvested directly into improving welfare services, rather than compensating for systemic workplace failures.

His message to policymakers and major public employers is blunt: meaningful, long-term investment is required. The alternative, he warns, is to accept a status quo that Sweden’s welfare system—and its workforce—cannot sustain.