Law firm Horten is facing a challenging time after losing the trust of several of their municipal clients. This comes in the wake of a TV 2 documentary that shows a now former partner in the firm, Nicolai Dyhr, advising a fraudster on how to cover up money laundering traces. The partner has since been suspended. Horten’s director, Anders Bager Jensen, has stated that the company is ready to engage in dialogue with the municipalities to rebuild trust. “We treat the inquiries from the municipalities with the utmost seriousness and fully understand that they may have questions following the statements made by our former partner in the TV2 program. For us, those statements were completely unacceptable and entirely incompatible with our values,” he wrote in an email.
Odense Municipality, Aalborg Municipality, and Copenhagen Municipality have demanded a detailed explanation from Horten after watching the documentary ‘The Black Swan’, in which Dyhr advises a businessman on how to conceal fraud within a series of companies. “Your best bet is to hand over a bankruptcy estate that is a hole in the ground,” Dyhr says on hidden camera in the documentary. Copenhagen Municipality’s Mayor for Health and Care, Sisse Marie Welling (SF), has stated that the municipality needs an account from Horten to assess whether the company can be trusted in the future. Employment and Integration Mayor Jens-Kristian Lütken (V) also wishes to investigate whether there are more problematic clients among Horten’s customer base.
Anders Bager Jensen has assured that Dyhr has not been involved in projects for the municipalities utilizing Horten’s services. “Nicolai Dyhr did not have any of Horten’s municipal or public clients,” he said, adding that the company looks forward to an open and honest dialogue with the municipalities to restore trust. At present, Dyhr is still acting as a trustee in a number of ongoing bankruptcy cases, even though he has been suspended from Horten. “Nicolai Dyhr is completely out of Horten. But at this point, Nicolai Dyhr is still a trustee in a large number of ongoing cases, and Horten cannot change that,” explained Anders Bager Jensen.
He emphasized that it is the courts that have appointed Dyhr as a trustee, and it is therefore up to them to decide whether he should continue in this role. Horten is now temporarily handling the cases to protect the interests of the creditors until a final decision is made by the courts. Horten expects the question of Dyhr’s continued role as a trustee to be clarified within the next 14 days.