Suspected corruption within the Oslo police

Suspected corruption within the Oslo police is not a single allegation but a concealed information and protection network linking police officers to the Twin’s criminal operations. Its reach becomes clear through revelations about Ab Lofthus, the framing of Sonny Lofthus, cooperation inside Staten Maximum Security Prison, and the laundering of criminal proceeds through Iversen Property. The mystery of the mole therefore shifts from whether a traitor exists to how a system of compromised relationships can protect itself and make an innocent officer appear guilty.

The Rumor and the Suspect

For years, police circles had circulated rumors that someone inside the force was passing information to the person directing much of Oslo’s drug and sex trafficking. Yet, as Simon Kefas tells Kari Adel, the talk never produced proof that either the mole or the criminal boss actually existed. The Twin was real, Simon confirms, but rumor alone could not establish who within the police served him.

Ab Lofthus’s suicide note seemed to supply the missing answer: it claimed that he was the mole who had helped drug dealers and traffickers by informing them about raids, evidence, and suspects. Simon rejects the note as conclusive. In his judgment, Ab was the least corrupt officer ever to work for Oslo Police, so the confession conflicts with what Simon knew of the man. The note thus functions as a misleadingly simple explanation for a more complicated betrayal, and as a central part of the account used to condemn Ab after his death.

Ab Lofthus and the Hidden Truth

The later disclosure reverses the meaning of Ab’s confession. Johannes Halden tells Sonny Lofthus that Ab had suspected who the mole was. Halden had overheard Hugo Nestor speak to his boss about getting rid of a policeman named Lofthus before he ruined their operation. Halden warned Ab that he was in danger and urged him to alert the police, but Ab believed other officers were already indebted to Nestor. He chose to act alone and made Halden promise to keep the conversation secret.

Ab’s isolation was therefore not evidence that he was the criminal insider described in his note; it was part of the danger created by his suspicion that corruption extended beyond one officer. Halden kept his promise until he finally told Sonny, delivering the account to the person whose understanding of his father had been shaped by the supposed confession. The revelation reframes Ab’s death as part of the effort to silence a threatened policeman, while explaining why the false account could endure: the witness who knew otherwise had been bound to silence.

A Network Across Police, Prison, and Business

The corruption reaches beyond information leaks. Ab’s diary, discovered years later by Markus Engseth, describes two corrupt police officers rather than one. Its account explains the advantage of a pair: when one officer was active, the other could provide an alibi, allowing both to remain above suspicion. They had turned a blind eye to drug dealing, human trafficking, and murder, and Ab feared that confession would ruin the people around him. His entries also describe communication through Hotmail addresses accessed on separate computers taken from the evidence room, with messages and letters left at designated drops. These precautions show corruption operating through covert information channels as well as direct access to police authority.

The network also reaches into prison operations. Hugo Nestor’s account of the murder arrangement for Yngve Morsand’s wife identifies Arild Franck as a collaborator: Franck arranged Sonny’s day release and location, while a trusted, corrupt prison officer accompanied him. Sonny was thereby positioned to take the blame for a murder committed by someone else. Franck’s role gives institutional form to Simon’s suspicion that the real power at Staten lay with Franck rather than the prison governor. The prison was not merely where Sonny was held; compromised staff could use its authority and procedures to place him in the outside world as a convenient suspect.

A further branch connects the criminal organization to financial respectability. Simon confronts Iver Iversen with evidence that Iversen Property had done business with the Twin, laundering money from drugs and trafficking in exchange for fictitious tax-saving losses worth hundreds of millions of kroner. Iversen denies knowing the Twin, but Simon says he has evidence that they worked together. The allegation places business transactions alongside police protection and prison collusion: the same criminal power could rely on information, institutional access, and financial concealment.

Exposure, Consequences, and Institutional Trust

The network’s protection of its members is visible in the alternatives Nestor fears after Sonny disappears. If Sonny is arrested, he might confess and identify the real killers in cases for which he had served time. If Sonny does not confess, Yngve Morsand might be arrested for his wife’s murder and reveal what happened. Nestor identifies finding and killing Sonny as the only favorable outcome. The calculations expose the purpose of the scapegoating scheme: Sonny’s apparent guilt is useful not only because it directs suspicion away from others, but because his silence keeps several connected crimes from being traced back to their actual perpetrators.

The aftermath does not reduce the institution’s response to a clean restoration of trust. During Sonny’s escape, the prison governor insists that his image be circulated and that the public be warned, while Franck has sought a media blackout. The governor’s stated grounds are public safety and the need to find a dangerous escaped prisoner; Franck believes publicity also serves the governor’s political standing. The dispute makes the police and prison response itself part of the struggle over who controls the story of the case.

In the aftermath of the shootings at Aker Brygge and St Paul’s Church, criticism of the police included allegations of brutality and concern over Simon’s actions. Nevertheless, Simon receives a hero’s funeral as a policeman who fought the city’s criminals and died in the service of justice, even though the public is prepared to overlook his departures from rules and Norwegian law. Commissioner Parr’s own moral flexibility complicates that public absolution: Kari Adel discovers that he secretly paid the utility bills for the Lofthus family house, and Parr admits doing so out of remorse for not caring for Sonny and his mother after Ab’s suicide. The gesture is compassionate, but it also reveals that institutional judgment and private conscience do not neatly align. The corruption plot’s final irony is that justice is pursued through compromised people and imperfect institutions, while public memory can honor a policeman without resolving every breach of the rules.