“My dear children, answer me now, answer me now”
Extract from a letter sent by a family from India to Denmark in hope of finding their three children. The DR documentary series “The Great Adoption Theft” (Det store adoptionstyveri) took Denmark by storm. It featured heartbreaking stories of children stolen from their parents by intermediaries through identity forgery for the purpose of making incredible amounts of money. Since 1964, there have been 21,100 international adoptions in Denmark, and the latest unveiled stories put a question mark on all of them.
Over the last decade, there have been multiple scandals related to shady practices in the area of international adoptions. With every scandal, the government responded the same: close adoptions from the country in question, investigate, and provide help to the adopted. No wonder that before closing the adoptions completely, there were barely five countries you could adopt from. However, no one has been brought to justice so far.
Members of the Danish Parliament are asking for an in-depth investigation of the entire adoption area and are putting pressure on the Ministry of Social Affairs to find those who are legally responsible. However, in some cases, those responsible are already dead, like Pastor George, who illegally sent 48 children to Denmark from India in exchange for what would be 4 million DKK today.
Besides international adoptions, discussions around the dinner table have also included the billionaire Østergaard family. Their company, Nordic Waste, has declared bankruptcy after creating a man-made disaster in the form of a contaminated soil landslide on its way to bury an entire town. The Østergaards have so far avoided any responsibility for the clean-up. Now, we taxpayers have to pay 2.2 billion DKK to stop the landslide.
Not only has the family avoided the bill, but they are actually making money from both the clean-up and the bankruptcy. Another company of theirs was handling the clean-up until it was discovered, and Nordic Waste owes 200 million DKK to other companies owned by the family. (Btw, the head of the family, Torben Østergaard-Nielsen, is Denmark’s sixth richest man and has a personal fortune of 42 billion DKK.)
As a consequence, the political parties are asking for changes to laws around bankruptcy and the registration of companies. They also propose a new special requirement for economic activities that trigger natural disasters to pay into a special insurance fund. It is definitely a space to watch for entrepreneurs.
That’s it for this week! Thank you for reading, and don’t forget that you have the right to address multiple issues during the same doctor visit. If the family doctor refuses, remind them that they signed a contract with the regional government that stipulates that.
Word of the Week
Jordskred: Landslide. (a) a mass of rock and earth moving suddenly and quickly down a steep slope. (b) the winning of an election with an extremely large number of votes. It is also used to point out an abrupt and decisive change (e.g. jordskredsvalg is used when a distribution of votes has major changes compared to the previous one).
