Yesterday’s new revelations on the financial dealings of influential people in Icelandic politics and pension funds are a direct illustration of worrying trading practices covered in the famous 2010 Alþingi research report into the financial crash, according to Associate Professor of Political Sciences at the University of Akureyri, Birgir Guðmundsson.
“One felt a real Déjà vu from 2010, when the research report came out. This shows in an even more graphic way than one would have believed just how this business was carried out in the years before the crash,” Birgir told RÚV.
The Kastljós program last night covered connections between the CEOs of two pension funds and offshore companies—CEO of Stapi, Kári Arnór Kárason, and CEO of the United Pension Fund, Kristján Örn Sigurðsson.
The program also covered the connection between former government minister and central bank director Finnur Ingólfsson with offshore companies—as well as similar offshore links by director of the Progressive Party, Hrólfur Ölvisson.
Helgi S. Guðmundsson, former head of the central bank board, was also the registered owner of a company in Panama, along with Finnur and Vihjálmur Þorsteinsson, the investor and former treasurer of the Social Democrats, who had a company in Tortola from 2001 until the bank crash.
Birgir says that both the pension funds and the Progressive Party must now investigate these cases in light of the information which has been revealed.
Prime Minister Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson told reporters that it is natural that the executive board of the Progressive Party will discuss the director’s trade with offshore companies, but adds that he thinks everything is now out in the open.
