Danish Welfare Agency Worker Is Accused of Stealing $17 Million

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A senior civil servant stole $17 million from the Danish welfare agency where she worked for 40 years — money intended to help the most vulnerable people, including the homeless and disabled — and is the subject of an international hunt, the authorities said this week.

Officials have not publicly named the suspect, a 64-year-old who was described as a “trusted employee” of the National Board of Health and Welfare, but the Danish news media have identified her as Anna Britta Troelsgaard Nielsen, who headed a department within the agency and last year received a medal for her service from Queen Margrethe II.

Mai Mercado, Denmark’s minister for child and social affairs, said in a statement that the person involved had committed systematic fraud over a period of 16 years. “I’m deeply shocked,” she said, adding that the crime was “completely unheard-of.”

The ministry and the police are investigating the theft, and officials have said that Interpol is involved as well, as investigators believe the suspect may be hiding abroad. Her lawyer, Nima Nabipour, has confirmed that he is in touch with the suspect but declined to discuss her whereabouts or the accusations against her.

It is not clear how Nielsen could have stolen the money, but the Danish media said she was a “super user” within the agency, giving her privileged access to the its computer systems.

Police investigators say the suspect made 274 transfers to accounts in her own name.

Asked at a news conference how a fraud of such proportions could have gone undetected, Mercado said, “That’s what I’m asking myself.”

Morten Niels Jakobsen, the state prosecutor, said in a statement that everything pointed to the suspect’s “using a disciplined and systematic approach” in the fraud. Officials said that the misconduct was discovered in August, that the investigation was now “well underway” and that the police had a good understanding of what happened and when.

The authorities have reportedly seized Nielsen’s properties in Denmark and Sweden, as well as a small amount in a Danish bank account. Several Danish news organizations reported that her family owned several properties in South Africa.

In Denmark, she lived in an unassuming house in Hvidovre, a middle-class suburb of Copenhagen, but she and her daughter made names for themselves in equestrian circles. Nielsen owned a stud farm and traded show-jumping horses, and her daughter is a competitive rider.

One organization that received grants from the agency said that time and again, funding was cut off when the money ran out.

“It meant we’ve had to let employees go or stop projects useful to the beneficiaries,” Sabine Klinker Elm, of the National Association Against Eating Disorders and Self-Harm, told DR, the national broadcaster.

The scandal is the latest in a series of cases in which misplaced trust and lack of oversight have apparently allowed fraud to flourish, costing Danish taxpayers billions of dollars.

In the largest case, the authorities are trying to reclaim $2 billion in improper tax refunds paid to companies using complex, fraudulent claims. The payments were handled by an employee who was flattered with boozy meetings with representatives of foreign companies seeking his advice on how to receive the payments.