Mullvad co-owner’s SEK 5 million donation: ownership, response and evidence limits

Record checked: October 29, 2026.

Mullvad co-founder and co-owner Daniel Berntsson donated SEK 5 million to Sweden’s Örebropartiet in 2025, according to Flamman’s reporting from the party’s income declaration and correspondence with Berntsson. In its July 20, 2026 “Donation controversy” statement, Mullvad acknowledges the donation but says it was private, not a donation endorsed or made by the company.

Which owner, and how is Mullvad owned?

Mullvad’s ownership page says Mullvad VPN AB is owned by its parent, Amagicom AB. It identifies Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson as the founders who together own 100% of the VPN company and its parent, and says both remain actively involved.

That statement does not specify each founder’s percentage. It should not be read as evidence of a 50–50 split, or of Berntsson being Mullvad’s sole owner.

The donation and why it drew criticism

The recipient was Örebropartiet, also called the Örebro Party. Flamman reports that Berntsson’s SEK 5 million contribution represented 72% of the party’s total income in 2025. In correspondence with the newspaper, Berntsson described it as a personal donation and cited the party’s opposition to corruption and dysfunction among his reasons for supporting it. Source: Flamman.

The controversy concerns both the scale of the contribution and the recipient’s politics. Flamman reports that party leader Markus Allard advocated extensive “remigration” and revoking citizenship. It also quotes Expo researcher Morgan Finnsiö describing the party as belonging to Sweden’s far right. Those are attributed reporting and assessments—not findings about Mullvad’s VPN operations. Source: Flamman.

What Mullvad said

In its July 20 response, Mullvad states:

• The donation came from “Daniel the individual.”
• Mullvad, its parent and its sister companies neither endorsed nor participated in it.
• The company intends to keep its mission separate from its founders’ broader political views.
• The founders strongly disagree on important issues, including this donation.

Mullvad does not describe itself as apolitical. It calls itself “a political company” focused on freedom of speech, freedom of information and privacy, including opposition to censorship and mass surveillance. It says its campaigning avoids positions outside those narrow areas.

Its position on the donation is more qualified than either endorsement or outright condemnation: “Mullvad does not condone it, nor condemn it,” followed by “It most likely was a bad idea.” These are the company’s stated positions, not an independent verification of financial separation. Source: Mullvad.

What this means for a VPN decision

This is relevant ownership and values information: the donor remains an active co-owner, and the company’s private-versus-corporate distinction does not remove that connection. A reader can treat an owner’s political funding as a reason to stop supporting a business without alleging a technical failure.

Conversely, the donation and Mullvad’s response do not establish logging, compromised infrastructure or changed handling of customer traffic. They are not security assessments. Technical privacy claims need their own dated evidence; how to read a VPN no-logs audit explains those limits.

The financial boundary remains narrower than a full accounting finding: Mullvad’s statement supplies no transaction records tracing the donated funds. The record therefore supports a reported personal donation by an active co-owner, with corporate involvement denied—not a finding that Mullvad itself donated to the party.