Marius Borg Hoiby, the son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit, has been hit with new criminal charges including a “serious narcotics offence” ahead of his rape trial scheduled to begin in February, Norwegian prosecutors said on Monday. Prosecutor Sturla Henriksbo told AFP that an additional indictment issued on Monday brings the total number of counts against the 29-year-old to six, including one narcotics offence from a 2020 incident involving “3.5 kilos of marijuana,” which Hoiby has admitted to committing.
His lawyer, Ellen Holager Andenaes, said her client had “on one occasion transported marijuana from A to B without earning a penny,” while Henriksbo added that the new charges also include two restraining order violations and three traffic offences. Hoiby, who was first charged in August with four rapes and multiple violent offences, has admitted to acts of violence in a separate case but denies most of the accusations, in what has become the biggest scandal to hit the Norwegian royal family.