Bribery trial recordings expose tactics of Tuusula power broker

Recordings from a bribery trial reveal the tough methods gravel magnate Juhani Sjöblom used to pursue his goals, Yle’s investigative programme MOT reports.

Sjöblom is a former National Coalition Party MP and has been one of the leading politicians in Tuusula, a municipality in southern Finland. He is also known as a campaign funder, major landowner and businessman with a bribery conviction.

His family company, Seepsula, produces aggregates in southern Tuusula. Sjöblom and his brothers founded it in the 1970s after acquiring a gravel ridge near their family farm. The business later expanded into property development. A company history published in 2017 said the resulting industrial area was home to more than 100 businesses and 1,000 jobs.

Sjöblom built a business worth tens of millions of euros and owned numerous companies and large areas of land. Although he has transferred business operations to younger generations, Tuusula decision-makers still regard him as the municipality’s most influential powerbroker, according to the local newspaper Keski-Uusimaa.

His reputation in Tuusula is mixed. Even political opponents have praised his vision for developing the municipality and creating jobs. Sjöblom did not agree to an interview for Yle’s report.

His overlapping roles as a major landowner and influential local politician repeatedly raised questions about conflicts of interest. In 2011, Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court ruled that his extensive business interests prevented him from serving as chair of Tuusula’s municipal executive board, which made decisions that significantly affected Seepsula’s interests. He later resigned from the municipal council, telling Helsingin Sanomat that the court had “castrated” him.

Sjöblom served in Parliament from 1997 to 2007. Over the years, news reports have also covered an administrative court ruling that he had avoided wealth tax, while noting that no crime had been established in that matter; a proposed land exchange suspected of being disadvantageous to the municipality; and a plot sale involving HOK-Elanto, in which he was reported to have promoted the retailer’s interests in planning talks.

His name resurfaced before the most recent municipal elections, when a former Tuusula mayor was alleged to have tried to favour him in the allocation of business plots. Helsingin Sanomat reported in 2024 on a large campaign donation from Sjöblom and his family to National Coalition Party candidate Pekka Toveri.

Yle says court documents have brought behind-the-scenes influence in Tuusula into unusually sharp focus. The reporting also prompted an unusual chain of events and alarmed municipal officials. When Finland’s Ministry of Justice asked the public for views on corruption, respondents highlighted overlapping roles, unethical networks and conflicts of interest.