A LOCAL TRAGEDY

If Denmark seems to be a relatively sleepy, secure, almost boring place, then that's because it is. Yet even in the nicest garden, there can lurk a serpent or two.

The "landbetjent" (literally country policeman) in the next door town from mine committed suicide back in May. Yet it is not until now that the reason has emerged. He was also the treasurer for the local branch of Lions Club, a worldwide charity. Over the past four years, it appears, he had embezzled around kr.250.000 from the club, by constructing totally fictitious accounts. When this came out - as it inevitably did - he felt forced to take his own life.

"Foreninger" (associations) are big in Denmark. Most forms of non-work activity take place in one; my bridge club, for instance, or the local football club, or the local cinema where I am the chairman. They are run on a voluntary basis, but that does not necessarily mean that they are small beer. Over kr.1 million went through the cinema's bank account last year, for instance; and since there is VAT on cinema tickets, we have to account to the authorities on a proper basis. It's hard to imagine how someone can fool his fellow lions and auditors for four years, but I suppose that that is what happens once in a while, if everybody in a society is comfortably well-off and trusting of others.

Walter Blotscher