Corruption by Mette Frisk Jensen

Author:Mette Frisk Jensen [Frisk Jensen, Mette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2022-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE SHADOWLANDS OF CORRUPTION

Despite all efforts, bad apples kept appearing in the king’s corps of civil servants.

In 1725, Frederik Rostgaard, head secretary in the Danish chancellery, was summoned to appear before the court, accused of accepting ‘coin and gift’. Rostgaard, a man of high standing, had held a series of prominent positions, having once served as a judge on the supreme court and as the director of the Danish West India–Guinea Company. Frederik IV had even married Rostgaard’s wife’s half-sister in 1721, so the two men were effectively brothers-in-law. That may explain, in part, why Rostgaard thought he was above the law of the land.

At any rate, Rostgaard must have realised he was in deep trouble. Shortly before his arrest he sent a petition to Frederik IV admitting that he had accepted “discretion” for various services rendered, but maintaining that he had never “done anything against His Majesty’s interests re the acceptance of coin and gift.”

Frederik IV showed no clemency. Rostgaard was stripped of all titles and positions and banished from the capital. Ordered to repay all monies he had received, he returned in shame to his manor house, Krogerup, in northern Zealand. Years later, though, he got permission to attend court again and was even appointed chief administrative officer of a region.

Rostgaard is just one example of corruption under absolute rule. Danish researchers have yet to systematically investigate the 1600s and 1700s, so exploring the shadow-lands of corruption among the civil servants of that era may reveal much that is new.

Although Danish corruption researchers may, some day, map out this whole dark, unknown territory, we would still not know for sure whether we had got the full picture. The difficulty is that our options are confined to following the tracks of the civil servants who were discovered and prosecuted, while we have no way of knowing just how many corrupt civil servants went smiling, unpunished, to their graves. Unfortunately we assume, as a rule, that any society has far more corruption than what comes to light. In this respect, contemporary Denmark is no exception.

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