27 Facts About Grete Faremo

Grete Faremo was born on 16 June 1955 and is a Norwegian politician, lawyer and business leader.

Grete Faremo is the daughter of the Norwegian politician Osmund Faremo and Tora Aamlid.

Much of Grete Faremo's early political philosophy was strongly influenced by her father, who was a prisoner of war during the Second World War, after being arrested as part of Adolf Hitler's Nacht und Nebel directive.

Grete Faremo attended Hornnes Gymnas in the nearby town of Hornnes and graduated in 1973.

Grete Faremo went on to study law at the University of Oslo, specializing in international law and spent a summer in 1978 at The Hague Academy of International Law.

Grete Faremo entered public service 1979, joining the Ministry of Finance as a Legal Officer.

Grete Faremo then went on to work as a Legal Officer in the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

In 1997, Grete Faremo became Executive Vice-President of Storebrand, a Norwegian financial services company.

Grete Faremo left in 2004 to take on the role as Director of Law, Corporate Affairs and Public Relations at Microsoft Corporation's North Europe Office and later Western Europe Office, where she developed the legal and public affairs division responsible for corporate compliance in the region.

Grete Faremo was a partner at an independent consulting firm, Radgiverne LOS AS, for short period in 2009, before she joined the Government.

On 3 November 1990, Grete Faremo was appointed Minister of International Development as part of Gro Harlem Brundtland's Third Cabinet.

Grete Faremo held this post for two years before being promoted to Minister of Justice and Public Security in September 1992.

The illegal surveillance of Furre took place at the same time that Grete Faremo was Justice Minister.

Grete Faremo resigned from the cabinet on 18 December 1996, however one source says she was forced to resign.

Grete Faremo continued in her role as a Member of the Storting until the following general election in 1997 when she did not seek re-election.

Grete Faremo declared that six years as Justice Minister was sufficient and that he wished to focus his attention on remaining in parliament and his family.

Grete Faremo took over the Ministry on 11 November 2011, tasked with strengthening the Norwegian emergency system.

Since taking over as executive director, Grete Faremo emphasised her ambition to increase the visibility and transparency of the organization.

Grete Faremo implemented changes to UNOPS that made it run more "like a business" and less like a bureaucratic agency dedicated to ensuring contracting rules were followed.

Grete Faremo wrote in 2019 that under her "more than 1,200 pages of rules went into the trash" and that she was "rewriting our operational principles" in the name of running UNOPS more like a fast and agile business.

Under Grete Faremo, UNOPS acquired a "surplus" due to charging other UN agencies more for the projects that went through it.

However, without these safeguards, Grete Faremo proceeded to make very questionable use of this money.

Grete Faremo lent over 25 million dollars to David Kendrick, a British businessman she met at a party she hosted, which included paying Kendrick's young daughter 3 million dollars to write a pop song.

Outside of her political and professional life, Grete Faremo is an experienced singer.

Grete Faremo began singing from a young age and is skilled in a variety of genres including pop, rock, musicals and cabarets.

Grete Faremo is particularly fond of performing songs by the French cabaret singer, Edith Piaf.

Grete Faremo is fluent in English, Danish and Swedish, aside from her Norwegian mother tongue.