First they tried to stop Wikileaks from publishing this and then the solvency committee of Kaupthing managed to get a ruling against the State Broadcasting News from talking about the findings.
Absolutely useless, the information is already everywhere and only confirms what people have been asking, yes Kaupthing like the other Icelandic banks was used as a tool to transfer as much cash and assets into the hands of a few connected Icelanders.
But getting that ruling might cost the “new” Kaupthing customers. This sort of PR disaster is suicidal. I know for one that whenever I get rid of my mortgage, my personal finances are going elsewhere. But not to an Icelandic bank. I am done with playing along.
And hundreds of customers are already saying they will leave the bank as soon as possible. Where should they go?
Landsbankinn let Jon Asgeir borrow $24 million without collateral for his home? Rumour has it that the reason so little leaks from the bank is that there are so many politicians who have dirty laundry within.
Glitnir has not given its customers any discounts on loans…except well, a story in DV this weekend told how they discounted roughly 100 million ISK on a loan that former CEO Larus Welding had with the bank. So he can go off to his master´s degree at Harvard without any worries about money.
The Savings & Loans have been milked dry mercilessly by the same system that ruled the banks. And MP bank, the new player in town is just the same people in different suits singing the same song.
But the spotlight has turned on the solvency committees. They appear to be working for the benefit of the same people who bankrupted Iceland, and absolutely not for the benefit of the people who pay them their wages.
Eva Joly spoke of an exodus. The feeling of most Icelanders who have listened to the news this weekend is that they live in an increasingly wicked place.
Related posts:
- Wikileaks: Serious Fraud Office urges Kaupthing whisteblowers to step forward
- Solvency Committees Having A Laugh
- Foreign Creditors Take Over Arion/Kaupthing – We Who Are Supposed To Pay Everything Have The Right To Know Everything
- Telegraph: SFO intensifies Icelandic banking inquiry after Kaupthing leak
- Fraudsters in Isolation – Arrests Finally Made In Iceland
Silvia Planchett
2 years ago
Wicked is a precise fit and one has to question how far into Icelandic society this wickedness extends.
Mike
2 years ago
Here’s a link to the document on Wikileaks:
http://www.kaupthing-loans.com
OhIngardail
2 years ago
I have a really nasty feeling that this wickedness is not unique to Iceland. That being so, where in the world would an enterprising Icelander want to go?
I live in the UK, and more than once over the last decade I have considered abandoning this country of my birth as I watched it go first mad with property speculation, then destroy itself by paying off the gambling debts of wealthy and influential kleptocrats who blackmailed our government by threatening to unleash armageddon on our financial system. People yet unborn will be paying for this evil.
And, as I write, two years after the first UK banking collapse (Northern Rock), the senior staff of the surviving UK financial institutions – surviving only because of the injection of billions of public funds that were intended for social security, roads, schools and healthcare – are awarding themselves ‘performance bonuses!’
Excuse my Icelandic – but Helvitis Fokking Fokk! That terrific phrase is just close enough to the English equivalent for me to be able to inject the right level of infuriated venom into it.
We British should be cacking ourselves that the remaining UK banks are using our public money in an attempt to re-ignite the same high-bonus speculative frenzy that kicked this disaster off in the first place. What’s the betting that we’ll have another ‘unforeseen’ financial accident that the government will be expected to bail out? I’m not so sure governments will do so the next time – and the mind recoils from the consequences of both giving into and also *not* giving into these blackmailers.
This morass of public and private corruption can be found in the US and Ireland too, of course. The US is big enough to get through this with nothing more than an economic headache and a temporarily tarnished reputation. Ireland is utterly screwed. The UK might get through it, but only if we overhaul our political and moral character. I doubt this will happen, and I suspect this will just be another of the UK’s periodic lurches towards third world status.
I don’t understand why the example of Iceland hasn’t been taken up more widely. The story is a terrible moral fable of complacency, corruption and incompetence that is NOT unique to Iceland, it’s just that being so small the consequences per capita has been abysmal.
And after all that; my point. Iceland has hit its nadir. Ireland and the UK haven’t even addressesd the problems – I sense that our crash is still coming, and even if we dodge the bullet this time, it will only be at the cost of an even bigger whoopsie a few years down the line. My advice to the Icelandic government (as if they wanted it!) is to wait for ISK parity with GBP and pay off the Icesave debt then!