2025-04-21
47 分钟This is The Guardian.
Welcome to The Guardian Long Read,
showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.
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The Real Scandi Noir,
how a filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denmark's self image by Samantha Sobramanian,
read by David Bateson.
The trap was laid in a rented office,
two rooms in downtown Copenhagen, furnished without a whisper of Scandi style.
If it wasn't for a Frida Carlo print on one wall,
the premises might have felt as impersonal and stark as a confessional.
That, in any event, was what it became.
For six months, beginning in mid-2022, a parade of people, members of motorcycle gangs,
entrepreneurs, lawyers, real estate barons,
politicians trooped through to recount their sins to Amirah Smajik.
They didn't come for expiation.
They knew Smajik to be one of them.
An outlaw, and in her particular case,
a business lawyer so skilled at laundering money that she'd enabled a couple of billion kronor in financial crime over the previous decade.
They called her the Ice Queen, because she showed not a flicker of regret for what she did.