Ardalan Shekarabi

Ardalan Shekarabi (Persian: اردلان شکرآبی; born 28 November 1978) is a Swedish social democratic politician. He was chairman for his party's youth league SSU 2003–2005.^[1] He was minister for social security from 2019 to 2022, and had previously served as minister for public administration from 2014 to 2019.^[2] From January to October 2019 he was also minister for consumer affairs.^[3]

Ardalan Shekarabi
Minister for Social Security
In office 1 October 2019 – 17 October 2022
Monarch	Carl XVI Gustaf
Prime Minister	Stefan Löfven Magdalena Andersson
Preceded by	Annika Strandhäll
Succeeded by	Anna Tenje
Minister for Public Administration
In office 3 October 2014 – 1 October 2019
Monarch	Carl XVI Gustaf
Prime Minister	Stefan Löfven
Preceded by	Stefan Attefall
Succeeded by	Lena Micko
Member of the Swedish Riksdag for Uppsala County
In office 15 April 2013 – 3 October 2014
Personal details
Born	(1978-11-28) 28 November 1978 (age 46) Manchester, United Kingdom
Political party	Social Democrats
Spouse	Therese Skoglund Shekarabi
Occupation	Jurist

Early life and education

Ardalan Shekarabi is the son of Hassan Shekarabi and Sahra Sajadi. He was born in Manchester in the UK and grew up in Shahriyar outside Tehran in Iran. Shekarabi came to Sweden in 1989 together with his mother as a political refugee from Iran.^[4] Together they got an apartment in Gävle and Shekarabi started in a preparatory class at primary school. After receiving a rejection decision on their asylum application to stay in Sweden, the family opposed the decision by hiding from the Swedish authorities. In 1991, they were granted a residence permit for humanitarian reasons.^[5]

In 2007, Ardalan graduated from Uppsala University with Master of Laws degree.^[6]

Controversies

In December 2004 Dagens Nyheter revealed that Shekarabi had siphoned funds^[7] from his political party's youth fund SSU into an account supposed to be used for integration projects. This account was later used for private purchases. Shekarabi claims he did not know where the money came from.

During Shekarabi's leadership of the SSU it was also revealed that extensive membership cheating had occurred, inflating numbers to gain more funds for SSU.^[8][9]