The Director General of benefits agency Kela, Lasse Lehtonen, started a week-long sick leave on Monday, Kela's board chair, Vertti Kiukas has confirmed.
However, newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported on Tuesday that Lehtonen was also on a working trip in Belgium's capital.
"I understand that [Lehtonen] is both on sick leave and on a business trip to Brussels," Kiukas said, according to the paper, which noted that the board chair did not comment how Lehtonen could be doing both at the same time.
At an extraordinary board meeting called last month, Lehtonen apologised for statements he made in the media, suggesting that the agency's staff members were easily replaceable.
Relations between staff members and the relatively new director general — who started the post in the early summer — have been strained. A main point of employee dissatisfaction was a call to staff members to increasingly work onsite at Kela's offices, rather than remotely.
Newspaper Iltalehti was the first outlet to report that Lehtonen was on sick leave and that he did not take part in a management meeting on Monday.
According to Kela, an assessment about the agency's management is underway and is expected to be complete in mid-December.
Kela's administration and operations are supervised by 12 Parliamentary Trustees. The trustees are cross-party MPs nominated by parliament members and serve a four-year term.
The Trustees met with Lehtonen last month. They discussed issues including staff members' distrust of the agency's management, communication and the changes that Kela is facing.
After that meeting, Trustee chair, MP Mira Nieminen (Finns) announced that the Trustees had confidence in Lehtonen.
"We have a good director general," Nieminen said at the time.
As the agency's top executive, Lehtonen earns around 20,000 euros per month. Kela pays out around 16.6 billion euros annually in benefits and reimbursements to people around the country.
HUS docs file complaint
After apologising for his comments about staff members, Lehtonen has taken a break from social media in recent weeks. For example, his profile on social media site X can no longer be found.
Lehtonen has said that he stopped commenting on social media on the recommendation of his mother and wife.
Iltalehti has also reported that four physicians from the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) have filed a complaint with the Justice Chancellor's office about Lehtonen. He led the hospital district's diagnostics unit in 2023-25.
Two HUS top executives, HUS CEO Matti Bergendahl and its HR chief Johanna Karppi, were also named in the complaint, according to news agency STT.
The complaint concerned Lehtonen's management style, with the physicians suggesting that as HUS' top managers, Bergendahl and Karppi had effectively approved of Lehtonen's actions.
The complaint also addressed how reorganisations were carried out at the unit, suggesting their employer had not followed legal obligations.
According to the complaint, staff members were not consulted in organisational changes and their concerns were not taken into account, STT reported.
"Diagnostics Director Lasse Lehtonen's management style has been described as leading by fear. Several people have found his behaviour inappropriate," the complaint stated, according to STT.
Among other things, the authors of the complaint requested that the Justice Chancellor assess the legality of the actions taken by senior management.
