(Taisto) Kalevi Sorsa - Valco scandal

Finnish statesman and prime minister (1972–5, 1977–9, 1982–7), born in Keuruu, SWC Finland. He studied at what is now the University of Tampere and worked as an editor at the publishing house of Tammi. He gained international experience with UNESCO in Paris, and in the ministry of education, before moving into politics. He was secretary-general of the Social Democratic Party in 1969, and its chairman in 1975. He entered parliament in 1970, and between the years 1972 and 1989 held the post of foreign minister three times and was prime minister in four different governments for a total of ten years. After his third term as prime minister, he became deputy prime minister of the coalition in 1987. He was the Speaker of Parliament (1989–91) then left politics and served as a member of the board of the Bank of Finland for five years. He is credited with helping to build the foundations of the Finnish welfare state.

Taisto Kalevi Sorsa (December 21, 1930 – January 16, 2004) was a Finnish politician who was Prime Minister of Finland four times: 1972-1975, 1977-1979, 1982-1983 and 1983-1987 and at the date of his death still held the Finnish record of most days of incumbency as prime minister.

Before a meteoric rise to the top of Finnish politics Kalevi Sorsa worked as a publishing editor, with his greatest "claim to fame" being to turn down the first novel of Kalle Päätalo, which turned out to be one of the greatest Finnish bestsellers of all time.

One of the most strongwilled but also thinskinned public figures, Sorsa had numerous fractious relations with other politicians and the whole of the media, which he lambasted by coining a pejorative epithet "infokratia".

He had good relations with those politicians who were clearly at a level he could not approach, such as Rafael Paasio and Willy Brandt who took him under their wings as a protege in the Socialist international.

Valco scandal

During the 1970s Finland started an experiment of state capitalism called Valco which was to have utilized Finnish high-tech know-how to mass produce television screens. Though the practise was arguably nearly legal at the time, subsequently passed corruption laws would classify the practise as gross corruption and even at the time the matter was a dark splotch on Sorsa's reputation.

The fact that Sorsa never attained the Finnish presidency, nor even ran for the post, was a cause of lasting bitterness, and his memoirs were not lacking in barbs towards his predecessors, contemporaries and successors.