Former prime minister Carl Bildt testified in the Lundin Oil trial at Stockholm District Court about the company's operations in Sudan. He described the company as a positive force in a complicated conflict zone and questioned reports of abuses. The indictment concerns suspected complicity in war crimes from 1999 to 2003.
On January 15, 2026, Carl Bildt testified as a witness in the ongoing Lundin Oil trial at Stockholm District Court. Bildt, a board member of Lundin Oil from 2000 to 2006, was questioned about the company's awareness of the situation in Sudan during the civil war. He emphasized that his knowledge was initially limited and that he had never visited the country.
Bildt claimed Lundin Oil was a positive force in the area and contributed to development. "It contributes to developing countries," he told journalists after the hearing. He described the conflict as deeply complicated with shifting loyalties and dismissed many reports of abuses as inaccurate or part of a propaganda war. According to him, fighting and bombings occurred in areas other than the company's Block 5A.
Prosecutor Ewa Korpi asked about reports from international organizations and an email from Bildt in the summer of 2001 warning of "indiscriminate bombings." Bildt responded that these concerned remote locations and that the company took allegations seriously through investigations.
Bildt questioned the existence of villages along the road Lundin built in Unity State, stating he had flown over the area and seen a flooded landscape without settlements. This contrasts with plaintiffs' testimonies, such as Gawar Mut Wat, who described how his village Kot was destroyed and he was forced to become a child soldier at age 12. "You cannot deny that the villages where we lived existed," Wat said.
The trial, Sweden's longest, began in September 2023 and is set to conclude in May 2026. Ian Lundin and Alex Schneiter are charged with complicity in gross violations of international law by enabling the regime to secure oil prospecting through violence, displacing and killing civilians. They deny the charges and claim factual errors in the indictment. Bildt does not regret his role and noted that oil now accounts for 90 percent of South Sudan's state revenues, not the cause of the war.
