An Icelandic Supreme Court judge did indeed notify the Committee on Judicial Work of his trading of shares in Glitnir bank, as the rules required, RÚV reports. In the RÚV news analysis program Kastljós on Monday, a member of the committee was not aware of the judge having notified the committee of his trading of the shares, but last night, the letter where the judge informs the committee about just that was discovered. That was confirmed by Hjördís Hákonardóttir, who chairs the committee.
The judge, who is also president of the Supreme Court, sent out a press release yesterday, stating he had followed the rules regarding investment reporting.
Skúli Magnússon, head of the Association of Icelandic Judges, believes information regarding the stock ownership of Supreme Court judges must have been leaked to the media in order to influence the operation of the courts, and possibly to increase the likelihood of cases being retried.
Steinunn Guðbjartsdóttir, former chair of the Glitnir bank winding up committee, told RÚV yesterday that the information had not come from the winding up committee.
RÚV asked the Financial Supervisory Authority whether it intended to look into where the information about the judges’ investments came from and whether this would qualify as a violation of bankers’ protection of the customer’s right to privacy.
The Supervisory Authority would not react to the news until the matter had been concluded. It did, however, point out that employees of financial firms are bound to secrecy about all information they receive relating to the financial firms. Failure to do so can result in fines or a prison sentence of up to two years.
