Ian Birrell

This determination to hold people to account for actions that caused intense financial misery contrasts strongly with Britain

There are many reasons to admire Iceland, but here is another one: it has just sentenced five senior bankers and one prominent investor to prison for crimes relating to the economic meltdown in 2008. And with these two separate rulings made last month in the Supreme Court and Reykjavik district court, the nation that gambled so heavily on the markets and lost so disastrously in the consequent crash has sent 26 financiers to jail for combined sentences of 74 years.

The authorities pursued bank bosses, chief executives, civil servants and corporate raiders for crimes ranging from insider trading to fraud, money laundering, misleading markets, breach of duties and lying to the authorities. Others still await trial after this fishing nation with fewer people than Sunderland stupidly tried to take on the world’s financial titans.

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