Friday 16 December 2011

Doubts over authenticity of alleged King Carl Gustaf photos

Expressen today publishes the photo allegedly showing King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden watching women having sex which has been at the heart of the scandal which began with the publication of the book Carl XVI Gustaf – Den motvillige monarken by Thomas Sjöberg, Deanne Rauscher and Tove Meyer.
The photo is due to be published in a biography of the gangster Mille Markovic in January, but experts consulted by Expressen doubt its authenticity.
The experts from British LGC Forensics and Audio Video Forensics and an unnamed Swedish firm conclude that the picture is taken from a video and that some changes have obviously been made to it to make it appear more as a video filmed in secrecy; a “rec” symbol and cross hairs have been added. The shadows and the lighting also make the experts believe that the face of the man watching the three women, said to be the King, may have been pasted on another body, but they cannot say this for sure.
Bertil Ternert, the Director of the Information and Press Department at the Royal Palace, is naturally jubilant and insists that this shows that the King spoke the truth when he denied the allegations in an interview in May.
Meanwhile Markovic continues to insist that the photo is genuine and adds that he will publish more photos and videos compromising the King on his website the day after his biography is published.
Peter Eriksson (the Green Party), the leader of Parliament’s standing committee on constitutional affairs says to the news agency TT that the revelation that the photo has probably been manipulated is of little relevance to the debate about confidence in the King. He finds it more relevant whether the King’s friends have had contact with criminals and if the King has known about such contact.

4 comments:

  1. It's so sad that people have nothing better to do than to try to embarrass or make other peoples lives miserable. All this to earn a buck. Shame on them, how sad.

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  2. The story is indeed becoming more and more bizarre, but although there remain some unanswered questions (such as why the King's friends entered into negotiations with criminals in order to buy compromising photos if they really believed that there could not possibly exist any such photos) one can only hope that this story will now come to an end soon. However, from the comments made today, it seems the gangster Mille Markovic and the authors Thomas Sjöberg and Deanne Rauscher are intent on trying to keep this story running also in the future.

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  3. Hi Trond,

    The face of the King in the infamous image has been copy-pasted from the classic engagement interview of 1976, where the King and Ms Sommerlath sit in the equally classic "engagement sofa". See this comparative study, by the nick "Stig-Britt" from the discussion forum Flashback today at 17:18 CET:

    https://www.flashback.org/sp34635240

    http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/6907/knugen.jpg

    Best regards,
    Panoptes

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  4. Thank you - your comment arrived a second after I saw that on Facebook. Seen with the naked eye the copy and paste does indeed seem quite obvious.

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