Antti Kaikkonen
Antti Samuli Kaikkonen (born 14 February 1974 in Turku, Finland) is a Finnish politician of the Centre Party. He has been a member of the Finnish Parliament from Uusimaa since 2003. He served as Minister of Defence from 2019 to 2023. Kaikkonen was the president of Finnish Centre Youth from 1997 to 2001. He has also been a member of Finnish Delegation to the Council of Europe since 2004. In 2013, Kaikkonen was convicted of corruption charges stemming from a campaign financing scandal. On 21 June 2016, Kaikkonen was chosen as the chairman of the Centre Party's parliamentary group. By 2019, Kaikkonen was parliamentary head of the coalition-leading Centre Party. Amidst the Oulu child sexual exploitation scandal, he called for all party heads in Parliament to meet, and declared "everyone who comes to Finland has to follow the local laws". Campaign finance scandal In the autumn of 2009, Kaikkonen received his share of the campaign finance. At that time, it was brought to public, that the Youth Foundation, of which Kaikkonen had been the chairman of the board since 2003, had distributed election support money to Kaikkonen, in municipal-, parliamentary-, and European Parliament -elections. In addition, it had also financed