The Finnish Security Police complained to the Finnish Council of Public Words about articles in the Suomen Kuvalehti ”Rotten Supo” cover story (SK 47/2010, published 26.11.).
In its complaint, Supo considered that it should have been given the opportunity to present its own views on the allegations in the articles in the same context. No factual errors were alleged in the articles.
On 17 February 2011, the Council of Public Words issued a decision acquitting the case.
”Because of its historical significance and strong institutional position, the Guardian Police is an important social power, whose position and activities must be openly discussed,” the JSN said in its decision.
”The Council of Public Opinion considers that the cases were a social assessment of the activities of the Protective Police and did not give rise to an unconditional right to a simultaneous hearing or to its own position.”
Read the full story as it appeared in the printed SK.
You can also read the article as a pdf file.
Read the other SK Supo stories here.
Cornered
Bullying is more widespread than the police know. There is a climate of fear in the Supo and people are afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals. Matti Mikkola says he has been subjected to discrimination and vilification for 16 years.
Chief Inspector Matti Mikkola, 62, is a Supo veteran. He has worked in the Finnish Security Police for more than 40 years, since 1982 as a senior inspector. According to Mr Mikkola, he has been subjected to systematic discrimination and bullying since 1994. He claims that there are several bullies.
”Bullying and discrimination have been committed by almost all Supo’s senior superiors since Seppo Nevala’s time. The targets have included heads of administrative offices, chief inspectors and departmental secretaries,” says Mikkola.
According to Mikkola, there is a climate of fear at Supo. Employees are afraid to complain about their treatment for fear of reprisals. For the same reason, it is difficult to get support from the work community. Those who have been reluctant have found themselves in better posts.
Discrimination occurs at many levels. Jobs are cut, workers are denigrated and forced to move to other jobs.
”By these means, people are isolated and gradually silenced. Workers are sent to different departments and not given any real tasks. There are now retired senior detectives in the Supo who have not been given any proper assignments for the last three years.”
In addition to the mental distress, the measures have a significant financial impact. The people who are excluded will not be given jobs, promotion routes will be blocked and there will be no need to increase salaries. This is reflected in pensions. The complaints have not changed Mikkola’s position, for example.
”Supo has the best lawyers at its disposal. Employees may not even get help from the union. What matters is that the Ministry of the Interior and the Police Board do not take any position on the situation.”
Mikkola feels that he has not received justice even after having reported his case. Attempts to influence the situation have hit a wall.
”I have tried to seek support from every possible direction. I have complained and made complaints, requests for clarifications and letters, but there is an invisible wall in every direction.”
”This is a Kafkaesque situation. The idea that you start to doubt what you say is not far away.”
”Back in the days of the previous chiefs Seppo Tiitinen and Eero Kekomäki, Supo was a great place to work,” he says.
Internal investigation of the printer
According to Matti Mikkola, bullying and discrimination started in 1994. He says he heard afterwards about a meeting of the management team where it was decided to sideline him.
”Around the same time, I had drawn up a personal safety statement, which my manager changed so much that it no longer held true. I went to point it out and it may have been the starting point,” Mikkola says.
”Gradually, after that, they started to corner me. There was no longer enough work for my right hand. My workplace was in the same premises as the bodyguards.”
Mikkola has not been told or given reasons why he was pushed aside. His access permits have been withdrawn and his career has been blocked.
Supo chief Seppo Nevala berated Mikkola several times on the phone. ”Nevala might have said, in a huff, that now you’re getting involved in things that are none of your business.”
Several years of subordination escalated to a serious level in 2002. Seppo Tiitinen, the former head of Supo, had appointed Mikkola as head of computer security. Now, Supo started to renew its IT systems and old equipment was destroyed. An old printer used for remote work had been left at Mikkola’s home, but had already been decommissioned. Mr Mikkola offered his old computer equipment and printer to a colleague for a total of €50.
Seppo Nevala therefore issued a written warning to Mr Mikkola for ’selling property belonging to the Agency, albeit of no value’.
”I was reprimanded even though the printer never changed hands and I never received a euro for it,” says Mikkola, who says the incident has been repeatedly used against him as he has tried to sort out his situation.
On several occasions, Mikkola has had her work cut and changed to a fixed-term contract.
”This was a deliberate tactic to reduce the responsibility of the work and thus my salary increase.”
An internal investigation by Supo was launched into the printer scandal, which led to Mikkola suffering from short-term depression. The arrhythmia was a permanent memory. He also faced a long period of sick leave, which led to a 25 % reduction in his salary. ”With tasks being taken away all the time, it was impossible to change the salary situation.”
In 2006, Mikkola was appointed Supo’s head of preparedness.
”At the time, I thought, ’Now I’ll finally get a proper job. But I wasn’t even given access to all the premises. When partners from the preparedness side came to visit Supo, I had to have someone else with me to open the doors.”
Denigration and subjugation
In early winter 2006, Mr Mikkola lodged a complaint with the Parliamentary Ombudsman asking for an investigation into Supo’s conduct in what he perceived as a case of discrimination.
According to Mr Mikkola, he was passed over several times when Supo was filling vacancies. The appointment memos belittled his professional experience and education.
Among other things, Mr Mikkola applied for the post of head of a regional unit in 2002, but was eventually selected by an official who had graduated as a police sergeant. Mr Mikkola had the same degree, but he also had a master’s degree in administrative sciences, a ’police master’.
Two years later, when he applied for the second regional unit chief position, Mikkola was not even on the list of interviewees. Despite the fact that he was the only applicant with experience in a similar managerial position.
In his complaint, Mr Mikkola also drew attention to the written warning and reprimand he had received for failing to comply with his official duties. By unanimous decision, the Civil Service Board annulled the warning. Mr Mikkola had spent two days maintaining the State’s computer equipment.
In 2008, Mr Jukka Lindstedt, Parliament’s Deputy Ombudsman, rejected all the points raised in the complaint. Among other things, the decision referred in general terms to problems in working life, which must be solved in relations between superiors and subordinates and by each workplace taking its own measures. Ultimately through the labour protection organisation.
”There was no evidence of any direct infringement of the law or neglect of duty,” Lindstedt said.
”After that, the designated people stopped saluting. I was prosecuted as a criminal,” says Mikkola.
”Supo’s prestige has been so high everywhere that there has been no desire to interfere in such one-man affairs anywhere. Supo has been forgiven a lot. It inevitably faces a cultural change.”
One more time
In August 2009, Mikkola made one last attempt to sort things out. She filed a request for an investigation with Supo, referring to the inappropriate treatment she had experienced. Mr Mikkola had been unjustifiably deprived of his job. The Director of Supo had also expressly forbidden Mikkola to have access to any archival material for his work.
The work on the material had been supervised by a university trainee.
In April of the following year, the Police Board replied to Mikkola. In a separate statement, it said that the statute of limitations had expired for prosecution of official offences. Consequently, Mikkola’s allegation of employment discrimination did not trigger any action by the Police Board.
”The discrimination was not contested, but its effects were not considered at all. The decision admits that Supo committed an official offence, but nothing followed from it,” Mikkola wonders.
He believes that the discrimination and isolation was deliberate, in order to encourage him to seek other employment.
”I had been working for Supo for decades, and then suddenly the rug was pulled out from under me. It’s been so hard to understand, not knowing what it was all about. At its worst, my circadian rhythm would go haywire when I’d wake up in the middle of the night wondering why I’d been chased.”
”My work history at Supo was good and I got a lot done. From the beginning, I wanted to think that bullying was only temporary. It was good to live in hope.”
Matti Mikkola will retire in April next year. This is why he says he now has the courage to speak out.
”This is not about revenge. My idea is to make it easier for others. Can Supo afford to lose any more skilled people?”
Exclusion and sick leave
Seppo Nevala and Paavo Selin were a good team. Then Selin was sidelined.
Paavo Selin, the former head of the anti-terrorism unit of the Finnish Security Police, was deliberately sidelined in his career. The chase, which started in 2005, has escalated to the point where Mr Selin has been transferred away from his former job. He has also had his access to his workplace revoked and his emails cut off.
Mr Selin’s attempts to clarify his situation have been rebuffed. Tormented by the events, Mr Selin was forced to take sick leave.
Mr Selin’s health situation came to a head after Nelonen news broadcast tapes in September this year showing former Supo chief Seppo Nevala berating his subordinate after a presentation on NATO in 2005.
Supo is currently investigating how the phone conversations ended up in the public domain.
According to information gathered by Suomen Kuvalehti from various sources, the leaker of the tapes was not Paavo Selin.
The torment begins
The events that led to the Selin deadlock started in July 2005. Finland was preparing for the EU Presidency and the debate on NATO and terrorism was intense.
Jyrki Katainen of the Coalition Party had been elected president of the party in June the previous year. In an interview with Savon Sanomat on 23 July, the 33-year-old opposition leader said that increased terrorism made the NATO issue even more important for Finland.
In Katainen’s view, the threat of terrorism had created a security deficit in Finland that NATO membership could fill. In Katainen’s view, Finland would be deprived of the intelligence that is so important in the fight against terrorism if it were to remain outside NATO.
The opposition leader’s opinion triggered a heated debate.
Just five days later, Supo chief Seppo Nevala, a guest on Yle’s Aamu-tv, rejected Katainen’s claim. Nevala said that Finland does not have an information deficit. The intelligence data used in the EU is also available to Finland. ”The information coming from NATO does not have much added value,” Nevala said.
On the same evening, 28 July, Sauli Niinistö, then Vice-President of the European Investment Bank, said on MTV3’s Seven News that being part of NATO and being exposed to terrorism were not related.
”NATO may have only a secondary role in the fight against terrorism, so I don’t entirely agree with Katainen,” Niinistö said.
About a month later, NATO-friendly minister Max Jakobson said that NATO was not needed to fight terrorism, as the EU had been able to cooperate on this issue. However, in an interview with Presso on 20 August, Mr Jakobson supported NATO membership, but on the grounds that the crisis in the European Union’s decision-making process had left Finland without security guarantees.
More pressure was put on Katainen on 22 August 2005. Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen told a meeting of the Centre Party parliamentary group in Seinäjoki that NATO membership would not help against terrorism because the struggle was mainly about police cooperation.
”The EU has a more varied range of instruments for fighting terrorism than NATO,” Vanhanen said.
Earlier in July, he had written in a column in Hufvudstadsbladet that membership of NATO would not provide Finland with protection against terrorism.
Nail in the coffin
About two weeks later, on 6 September, a meeting with journalists was held at the premises of the Ministry of the Interior in Kirkkokatu, convened by Minister of the Interior Kari Rajamäki. As the 2006 EU Presidency approached, the Ministry organised dozens of meetings with journalists to provide a variety of background information.
One of the invited speakers was Paavo Selin, head of Supo’s counter-terrorism unit. The theme of the event had been decided in advance by the Ministry. The programme and details had been discussed with Minister Kari Rajamäki.
The choice of Selin was a conscious decision. Mr Selin chaired several working groups which the Ministry had appointed him to head. Mr Selin did his job well. As a result, Rajamäki used him as an expert on several occasions.
The issue of the fight against terrorism and the role of NATO came up at the journalists’ meeting. Mr Selin said that Finland, as a non-NATO country, would not be deprived of any intelligence in the fight against terrorism.
”NATO focuses on the military dimension of terrorism. It has no relevance for the fight against terrorism in Europe,” Selin said in a news report carried by STT the same day.
This was not Selin’s own radical opinion. The speech was in line with the government and the Supo leadership.
The then Interior Minister Kari Rajamäki (S&D) says that nothing in Selin’s speech was surprising.
”No new policy needs related to Supo’s role were raised. Nor did the speech cause any problems in dealing with EU issues or counter-terrorism issues between the European Union and the United States,” Rajamäki tells Suomen Kuvalehtelle.
Nevala turns against
The presentation set off a whirlwind of events, the consequences of which are still being debated.
Immediately after the news, Jyrki Katainen called Supo chief Seppo Nevala. Mr Katainen criticised Paavo Selin’s perception of NATO’s limited importance in providing information on terrorism. Mr Katainen accused Seppo Nevala and a Supo official of trying to oust him from his position as party leader.
I have been contacted and you know who the person is. Not just any person, but the leader of the opposition party, who is now accusing me of … being used by me to derail him from his position as chairman,” the Supo chief, who has lost his judgement, said in telephone tapes obtained by Nelonen.
Instead of fighting off political pressure or manoeuvring, Nevala buckled and turned on his subordinate. Immediately after being contacted by Jyrki Katainen, Nevala made several phone calls to Selin, berating his subordinate in an agitated tone.
This is getting too thick for you to take a stand on hot-button political issues. There has been a reaction to this from a high political level, that a petty officer of the protection police has taken such a stand,” said a frustrated Nevala, who referred to Mr Katainen several times during the conversation.
Only a month earlier, Mr Nevala had been in agreement with Mr Selini.
The reversal was surprising, as Nevala and Selin had a long history of working together.
The reversal was surprising, as Nevala and Selin had a long history of working together.
While Seppo Nevala was still working in the police department of the Ministry of the Interior in the early 1990s, Selin was still an expert in the ministry. After that, Nevala moved to Supo and Selin became the head of the Helsinki Narcotics Police.
The two crossed paths once more. Nevala was able to lure Selin to the Finnish Security Police, as head of the Counter-Terrorism Security Unit.
Over the years, the cooperation had gone well, Nevala and Selin were a good couple.
Things started to change in the 2000s.
Nevala came under heavy criticism when it was revealed how lightly Supo had begun an investigation into Alpo Rusi’s alleged espionage in 2002. The investigation lasted a year. No charges were ever brought against Mr Rus. The state was ordered to pay damages.
The next blow came soon after. In 2004, Nevala was suspended along with Deputy Chief Petri Knappe over the Sonera telecoms case.
An Interior Ministry official says the suspension was a severe setback for the mischievous Nevala.
”He was put under pressure he was not used to. Nevawa was even predicted to be the next police chief,” says the official, who does not want his name to be made public.
At the same time, Paavo Selin’s career was on the rise. It was in 2004 that Selin applied for the same post of Chief of Police. In the Alpo Rusi case, Selin had warned Nevala about the weakness of the evidence. Selin’s solid position was also reflected in the fact that he was tasked with considering the reform of Supo’s role.
”Selin was young and bouncy and active and successful in everything he did,” says the official, recalling the events.
Then the old power struck back. Selin wanted to be punished. The action was deliberate.
Selin’s forced relocation
The events have come to light now, ten years later, when on 6 September Nelonen published the telephone tapes it had received. Jyrki Katainen admits that he was in contact with Nevela. ”But I’m not saying that an official cannot take a stand,” Katainen has said.
Referring to his phone call in 2005, Mr Katainen said he had a ”good and substantive discussion” with Mr Nevala.
The discussion with Seppo Nevala was not enough for Jyrki Katainen. He sent an email directly to Paavo Selini:
Hi, I read your interview on STT. I don’t know if it matches your message, but in any case it caused a bit of a stir. I enclose my column in Turun Sanomat on this subject. I am really surprised at the statements by Supo representatives that NATO has no role in the fight against terrorism. Some defence officials have also expressed the same wonder. When you read the article, I would like to hear your views on where my logic fails. Jyrki Katainen.
Selin did not want to get involved in politics. He delivered a message to Nevala.
Seppo Nevala died in December 2008. His name is now being raised by former Interior Minister Kari Rajamäki.
”I find it cowardly that we are now going behind the back of a dead man in a situation where there is reason for a critical review of Supo’s own management,” says Rajamäki, referring to allegations of bullying at Supo.
Jyrki Katainen’s call to Nevala in 2005 had dramatic consequences. In the tapes released by Nelonen, Nevala promises to prevent his subordinate from advancing in his career. This is what happened.
Paavo Selin was gradually sidelined at Supo. Preparations to remove him from the counter-terrorism unit began as early as 2006.
According to documents obtained by Suomen Kuvalehti, Selin’s superior, Deputy Chief Petri Knape, first proposed a staff rotation during a performance review meeting on 28 December 2006. Mr Selin rejected the proposal.
The real chase started after the parliamentary elections of 18 March 2007.
Vanhanen’s second government was appointed on 19 April, but only five days after the elections Seppo Nevala removed Selin from his post as head of the counter-terrorism unit. Against Selin’s own wishes.
Selin fought back. He asked the Interior Ministry to clarify the legality of the decision. One reason for suspicion was that documents concerning the transfer decision might have been written only after Nevala’s decision.
However, Mr Selin’s request was treated as a normal complaint by the ministry. In practice, this meant that Mr Selin’s superiors did not have to take a position on the matter. No legality control audit was carried out.
In its reply to Mr Selin’s complaint, the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior stated that Mr Nevala had not acted unlawfully in ordering Mr Selin to rotate without his consent.
”In all other respects, your complaint does not give rise to further action by the police high command,” the reply said.
In May 2007, Selin was transferred to the post of head of Supo’s field surveillance unit, with the title of rotation. It was a rare move at Supo, a forced transfer.
Mr Selin was not consulted. Nor has it been asked now that he has had his access cards revoked and his e-mails cut off. Mr Selin does not know what he is accused of.
Mental pressure
One of the election winners in 2007 was the Coalition Party. Opposition leader Katainen became finance minister and Anne Holmlund of the Coalition Party was appointed as the new interior minister. Her special adviser Ilkka Salmi (Coalition Party) was appointed as the new head of Supo on 1 November. Paavo Selin also applied for the post.
At the same time that Mr Nevala made the fateful phone call to Mr Selin, Ilkka Salmi had been promoted to Supo’s chief inspector.
Paavo Selin’s torment did not end with the parliamentary elections.
In an opinion piece published in Helsingin Sanomat on 14 November, Mr Selin describes how ”the news coverage by Nelonen and the ensuing coverage in other media has been personally difficult for me. The pressure has also been transmitted to my close ones.”
Mr Selin has recently submitted reports to the Labour Inspectorate and the Federation of Police Associations on the inappropriate treatment he experienced at work.
The Police Directorate is currently investigating allegations that Paavo Selin has been subjected to bullying and defamation at his workplace in Supo.
Police Director General Mikko Paatero has ordered the Police Board to investigate the allegations of inappropriate treatment of Mr Selin. Mr Paatero said he would take up the case on the basis of press reports. The Police Board has not rec§eived a formal request to investigate the matter.