Gottfrid “anakata” Svartholm Warg, the Pirate Bay founder who has been held in a Swedish detention facility for over two months, could face new criminal charges in his home country.
“The new [criminal suspicions] are four counts of aggravated fraud and four counts of attempted aggravated fraud,” Fredrik Berg, a spokesperson for the Swedish Prosecution Authority, told Ars. “He is still in pretrial detention awaiting trial.”
Berg added, however, that the court denied the request to extend his detention on the suspicions of attempted aggravated assault, but kept the suspicions of aggravated assault (“grovt bedrägeri”) alive.
Repeated attempts to contact the prosecutor in the case, Henrik Olin, and Svartholm Warg’s defense attorney, Ola Salmasson, were unsuccessful. The suspicions—which were brought Friday and can allow a suspect to remain in custody—are not the same as criminal charges. The new case, whose victim has yet to be named, remains under investigation.
Svartholm Warg had been living in Cambodia, but in September he was deported to Sweden on a visa violation to face possible charges in a hacking case against Logica, a Swedish IT firm that contracts with the Swedish tax authority. Formal charges have yet to be brought in that case.
Under the Swedish justice system, authorities can keep suspects in detention even before they are formally charged with a crime. However, the case must be reviewed by a judge every two weeks to decide whether to release the suspect. In Svartholm Warg’s case, that detention has been ongoing since September.