Prime Minister of Iceland Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir criticized her British counterpart Gordon Brown in an interview published in The Financial Times today for having used the Anti-Terrorism Act to freeze Icelandic assets in the UK one year ago, which, according to her, deepened the financial crisis in Iceland.
Prime Minister of Iceland Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir. Photo by Geir Ólafsson.
The PM stated that Brown had violated the general rule that the public should not pay for the mistakes of the executives of private banks. However, she accepts that the Icelandic nation should shoulder most of the responsibility for the collapse of the Icelandic banks, ruv.is reports.
She explains the collapse was caused by uncontrolled capitalism and greed, megalomania and the interconnections between companies owned by a handful of wealthy people.
Sigurdardóttir also expressed her discontent with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has postponed reviewing the economic stabilization program and paying the second part of the bailout loan for Iceland for months. The delay is “not acceptable,” the PM said.
Sigurdardóttir finds it “unfair” that the IMF and the Nordic countries have made it a condition for their financial assistance that the Icelandic government concludes the Icesave dispute with the governments of the UK and the Netherlands first.
However, the PM is hopeful that the IMF will review the economic stabilization program for Iceland in a few weeks.
Click here to read the article on FT.com and here to read more about Icesave and the IMF.
