Saturday, 15 October 2016

Iceland has found nine top bankers guilty and sentenced them to decades in jail for crimes related to the 2008 economic crash.

On Thursday Iceland’s Supreme Court returned a guilty verdict for all nine defendants in the Kaupthing market manipulation case, after a long running court trial which began in April last year.

Kaupthing was a big international bank headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland. It expanded internationally for years, but collapsed in 2008 under huge debts, crippling the small nation’s economy.

By demanding that bankers be subject to the same laws as the rest of society, Iceland opted for a very different strategy in the wake of the financial crisis to rest of Europe and the US, where banks were fined nominal amounts, and directors and chief executives escaped punishment altogether.

While the US and UK governments provided bail outs and government stakes for their big banks with tax-payers’ money – essentially giving bankers the green light to continue behaving in the same way – Iceland adopted a different approach, declaring it would let the banks go bust, weed out and punish the criminal element at the top of the banks, and protect the savings of the people.

Former director of the bank, Hreiđar Már Sigurđsson, who was found guilty and jailed last year, was also given a six-month extension to his sentence on Thursday.

According to Iceland Monitor, the bankers are found guilty of crimes relating to deceitfully financing share purchases – the bank lent money for the purchase of the shares while using its own shares as collateral for the loans.

More:

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/30338/52/

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IZAKOVIC