Daily Mail<\/a>: \u201cThe Duchess attended a dinner hosted by the World Health Organisation in Geneva, where more than 25 ministers and delegates were present ahead of the World Health Assembly.<\/p>\n\u201cAs she was leaving the venue, a number of attendees approached her requesting photographs. As is often the case at public engagements, and where time permits, the Duchess politely obliges such requests.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spokesperson added: \u201cUnderstandably, vetting the background of every person who asks for a selfie is not possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be absolutely clear, the Duchess does not know Mr Rydman, had no prior awareness of him attending the event, and was unfamiliar with the concerning reports relating to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Rydman is a controversial figure in Finland.<\/p>\n
In 2023, he was involved in a racism scandal after various of his texts to his former girlfriend were published in a newspaper.<\/p>\n
He could be seen complaining about Muslim women wearing headscarves, describing people from the Middle East as \u201cmonkeys\u201d and himself as \u201cNazi\u201d.<\/p>\n
He did not apologise but said he is \u201ccommitted to equality and non-discrimination\u201d.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Mr Rydman was accused of grooming and sexually harassing young women and girls.<\/p>\n
He vehemently denied the claims.<\/p>\n
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation started a preliminary investigation, but no charges were brought against him.<\/p>\n
In February 2023, he published his own book titled The Secret That Did Not Exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, Wille Rydman, a right-wing politician currently serving as Finland’s minister of Social Affairs and Health, shared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,15858,15859,4866,222998,4870,22466,222999,223000,111,139,69,223001,223002],"class_list":["post-435740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-harry-and-meghan","tag-harry-and-meghan-news","tag-meghan-markle","tag-meghan-markle-backlash","tag-meghan-markle-latest","tag-meghan-markle-news","tag-meghan-markle-politician","tag-meghan-markle-wille-rydman","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-wille-rydman","tag-wille-rydman-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}