Jakob Scharf, who headed Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service, PET, from 2007 to 2013, turns 60 on Monday, August 24, 2026. He now runs the private security company Certa Intelligence & Security.
The birthday is marked in a Ritzau profile published Monday morning by Avisen Danmark. It reviews Scharf’s career in the Danish state and his continued work with security and espionage. The same profile was also carried by JydskeVestkysten.
Scharf qualified as a lawyer in 1990 and planned to become an attorney. According to the profile, a temporary stop at the Ministry of Justice instead turned into more than two decades in state service. He worked there as a case officer, minister secretary, legal attaché and head of department.
In 2003 he became head of the National Police’s Police Department. Four years later he was appointed chief of PET. He held the post until 2013, leaving after a turbulent period.
Ritzau notes that it emerged during his time at PET that he had asked staff to establish when Pia Kjærsgaard was unable to attend a planned visit to Christiania. A meeting without the Danish People’s Party leader would avoid a significant security risk.
Afterward came the case surrounding journalist Morten Skjoldager’s book “Syv år for PET,” which was partly based on conversations with Scharf. In 2020, Østre Landsret sentenced him to 10 day fines of 1,000 kroner each for breaching his duty of secrecy by passing on confidential information for the book.
From state service to private security
Scharf helped found Certa Intelligence & Security in 2014, after his years at PET, and is its director. The company has around 30 employees and has most recently established itself in Japan.
A working life close to terror threats and other security risks has not made him more worried about the world, the profile states. He describes a basic trust that the challenges can be handled. The move to the private sector required a different way of thinking, he says, with less patience for things that do not work.
Outside work, Scharf travels with Anette Holme, his partner since their student days. Some years ago the couple bought a house in Spain, and they have a dachshund named Frida, which Scharf describes as the cleverest and most spoiled dachshund in the world.
Together with his sister, he has taken over their parents’ summer house, a disused railway station in West Jutland where the siblings spent their childhood summer holidays. Scharf was born in Gentofte and grew up in Espergærde, Helsingør and Nakskov.
For that reason he has found it hard to name a single childhood home, per the profile. The old station in West Jutland comes closest.
