Stig Svante Eugén Bergling, later Stig Svante Eugén Sandberg and Stig Svante Eugén Sydholt, (1 March 1937 – 24 January 2015) was a Swedish Security Service officer who spied for the Soviet Union. The Stig Bergling-affair, one of Sweden's greatest spy scandals, began when he was arrested in Israel in 1979 by Israeli counterintelligence and in the same year in Sweden was sentenced to life imprisonment for aggravated espionage. He escaped in 1987, with the assistance of his then–wife Elisabeth Sjögren during a conjugal visit, and fled to Moscow. Bergling's escape was a major embarrassment for Sweden's liberal prison system and prompted the resignation of the justice minister.
Bergling lived for several years in the Soviet Union, Hungary and Lebanon until, for health reasons, he voluntarily returned to Sweden in 1994. He continued to serve his sentence until 1997, when he was paroled. During the last years of his life, Bergling lived in a Stockholm nursing home and had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He died there on 24 January 2015, at 77 years old.
Early life Bergling was born on 1 March 1937 in in the City of Stockholm, Sweden. His father, who came from a wealthy home in Sala, was an engineer and worked with general insurance at an insurance company. Bergling's mother, who came from a working class home in Falun, had a strictly religious upbringing and worked as a secretary during Bergling's upbringing. Bergling had a younger sister. He attended , a private school in Östermalm, Stockholm, and then attended Östra Real. In 1957, he did his military service as a coastal ranger at the Vaxholm Coastal Artillery Regiment (KA 1) in Vaxholm. 3rd photo gallery He also became a reserve officer and advanced to the rank of lieutenant in the "Blocking Battalion Bråviken" where Bergling was responsible for security matters. The battalion had – in the event of war – the task to defend the inlet to Oxelösund and its surroundings.
Säpo, Fst/Säk and overseas service In 1958 he began working at Östermalm police station at the same time as . Forsberg was the man who was to become the head of the Swedish counterintelligence and later be one of the men who disclosed Bergling. After some time, Bergling started working within radiopolisen and then the utlänningsroteln ("alien department"). After having worked as a police officer for 10 years, Bergling was employed in 1969 at the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) and worked at the Bureau II, the surveillance unit, the unit engaged in counterintelligence against Soviet Union agents in Sweden. In 1971, Bergling was on temporary leave from Säpo and began working at the Defence Staff's Security Department (Fst/Säk). In his new role as a liaison officer between the Säpo and the Defence Staff, he participated in the work to map the Soviet diplomats' activities in Sweden. Meanwhile, at Fst/Säk, Bergling copied a binder with classified documents. The binder contained the so-called fortification code, or FO code (Fortifikationskoden), the top-secret list of Sweden's defence facilities, coastal artillery fortifications, mobilization stores, command centers and radar stations. Bergling needed the information for his work at the Defence Staff, some times for long periods of time and it was impractical for him to return the original every day. He got permission from one of his superiors to obtain a copy of it. When Bergling was later to return it, he became angry with one of his superiors, Bengt Wallroth (later Director-General of the National Defence Radio Establishment) who started arguing and criticizing him. Bergling disliked the Defence Staff and Wallroth and instead of destroying the copy he kept it and put it in a safe deposit box at Erik Dahlbergsgatan in Stockholm.
Alongside the work home in Sweden, Bergling served several times in various UN battalions around the world. Bergling was a reserve officer in the Swedish Coastal Artillery, and in 1968 he was stationed in Cyprus as a military police chief. In November 1972 he came to the Middle East as a UN observer, at first in Israel and the following year in Lebanon. At that time, GRU officer Alexander Nikiforov was working as military attaché in the Soviet Embassy in Beirut. Bergling was in need of money and went to the Soviet Embassy and offered Nikiforov the copied binder with secret information. In November 1973, Bergling switched duty tour in Lebanon with a Belgian major so he could go to Stockholm and retrieve the binder. He flew from Stockholm via Budapest to Beirut and on the 30 November 1973, he sold the copied binder with the documents to the Soviets. Bergling received 3,500 dollars for it and was later told, after the binder had been examined in Moscow, that "we already have this information, ours is just a bit older."
Bergling stayed as an UNTSO observer another year in the Middle East and returned home in January 1975, and was then back at the Security Service and the so-called "Russian Division" (Ryssroteln) where he previously worked. Bergling's contact, Alexander Nikiforov, had realized that as a newly acquired Soviet agent, Bergling would be able to do more good in Sweden. Back at Säpo, Bergling was instructed by the Soviets to investigate what the Soviet intelligence men did wrong. The errors were reported by Bergling to Moscow who called them back home. To get in touch with the Soviets he wrote letters with "invisible writing", which was done with the help of carbon paper. The writings were then presented with a special liquid. He got messages back using a shortwave radio.
However, it was not in the Middle East where Bergling was trained as a spy but in East Germany. As an employee of the Security Service, he was not allowed to go to the Eastern Bloc countries so the trips to his employers in East Berlin were made in the greatest secrecy. To get into East Berlin, Berling had to go through the Berlin Wall at a special door at Friedrichstraße. It was an ordinary door in the house next to the Friedrichstraße station entrance. His liaison officer went ahead and then Berling could go straight out through a small door and suddenly he found himself in the station on the western side. It was, however, not just the work at the Security Service that gave Bergling the opportunity to conduct espionage. As a Swedish military reservist, he served several times in connection with various military unit exercises all around Sweden. In the autumn of 1975 he was stationed at the top secret coastal artillery battery "OD" (Femöre battery) in Oxelösund which at that time was an important part of the Swedish coastal defence and protection against the Soviet Union in the east. As a high ranking staff officer and head of the Section II of the Defence Staff, Bergling had access to the safe and had the opportunity to look through the documents when he was duty officer by himself.
Bergling suspected and arrested
In March 1976, Bergling was placed at the surveillance division at Säpo, and then got a unique insight into the ongoing projects, which had the purpose of exposing the Soviet intelligence officers and to recruit its own Soviet informers. As Bergling increasingly revealed more to his Soviets employers, suspicions also increased at Säpo that something was not right, and that it had a mole in the organization. Bergling soon became a suspect and Säpo began to follow him. At this time, the civilian Soviet secret service KGB also had a mole high up in its own organization; Oleg Gordievsky, who for some years had regularly provided the Western Bloc with information. Through contacts with his military colleagues at the GRU, Gordievsky understood that they had an agent placed in Säpo in Sweden. This information was communicated by Gordyevsky to the west through his regular contacts with the British MI6. Meanwhile, in 1976, Bergling's Swiss fiancee reported him for assault. At the same time she informed about her suspicions that he was a spy. Nothing happened except that police interrogated the woman.
In 1977, Bergling applied for a new UN service and was deployed to Suez. Säpo had then received information regarding Bergling's contacts with an identified GRU officer in the Middle East. Bergling was in Jordan when he decided to fly back to Sweden. However, there were no flights to Sweden from Jordan, so Bergling went to Israel instead. On 12 March 1979, Bergling was arrested by the Israeli counterintelligence and security service Shin Bet at the passport control at Ben Gurion Airport after the Israelis had been informed by Säpo. Säpo believed, however, that they themselves could not arrest him because their information would not have been useful in a Swedish court. At the same time, Säpo bureau chief informed the Israelis that Bergling had intended to return to Israel. The arrest of Bergling occurred therefore independently by Israel, and the reason for this was that Shin Bet needed to find out if Bergling also had conducted espionage on Israeli interests during his time in the Middle East. He got to choose where the interrogations would take place – in a prison or in a luxury hotel. Bergling got half an hour to decide and chose the luxury hotel. After seven days of interrogation, Bergling was put on a flight to Copenhagen where he was met by staff from the Danish secret service. They brought him to Helsingborg where he was met by old colleagues from Säpo and then taken to Stockholm. All in all, Bergling had earned 67,000 SEK on his spying.
Prosecution, in prison and conjugal visits
Bergling was detained in custody in March 1979 and defended by the lawyer . On 7 December 1979, he was sentenced in Sweden to life imprisonment for aggravated espionage and aggravated unauthorised dealing with secret information for handing out the fortification code (FO code) – the list of Sweden's defence installations, coastal artillery fortifications and mobilization stores. He was also accused of having handed over the Supreme Commander's war planning of the Soviets – planning on how the Swedish Armed Forces should act at different levels in a war situation. These were documents that had even greater secrecy than the binder that Bergling handed to the Soviets in Beirut. Bergling said that he simply did not know where these documents were and that he would never had the time to copy the documents without being detected. Also, in his defence, Oleg Gordievsky (the Western agent in the KGB) reported to the West that Bergling handed out the fortification code, but never said anything about the Supreme Commander's war planning documents. The Stockholm District Court cleared him of these charges. Bergling's then fiancee was sentenced to three months in prison for accessory to espionage.
After the verdict, Bergling was subjected to, for reasons of national security, a very strict solitary confinement. The then government under Minister for Justice Håkan Winberg decided on 10 January 1980 of certain restrictions for Bergling under the penal law (kriminalvårdslagen). Letters to and from Bergling were reviewed by Säpo and were kept. Visits and phone calls could be banned if they were detrimental to national security. Regulations regarding Bergling's treatment in prison was entrusted to the National Prison and Probation Administration to consult with the National Police Board on the application. It was the National Police Board's Security Department that would account for the safety assessment and determine what considerations of national security demanded in the form of restrictions. On 12 June 1980, Bergling offered himself to be replaced by Raoul Wallenberg, but the Soviet Union did not respond. According to information from there, Wallenberg died in prison in 1947.