The office of the special prosecutor, responsible for investigating the banking collapse in Iceland, is seeking cooperation with Nordic specialists. Cooperation with the British Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been confirmed.
Photo by Geir Ólafsson.
“We will exchange information with the British and I hope to have one of their investigators located in Iceland,” Eva Joly, advisor to special prosecutor Ólafur Thór Hauksson, told Morgunbladid.
Specialists from the SFO sent a letter to Joly after having read the Kaupthing loan book, which leaked to the media, offering their cooperation and assistance on investigating the banking collapse in Iceland.
Hauksson said he and Joly had decided at a meeting on Wednesday to accept SFO’s offer on cooperation. They are also keen on cooperating with the Nordic countries, especially Norway where Joly is from, and a Norwegian representative may meet with Hauksson in Iceland in the coming days.
Joly has a meeting scheduled with the director of SFO, Richard Alderman, on September 11. “We have common interests to protect and it will be interesting to see how this will develop,” Joly said of their planned cooperation.
According to Joly, the investigation in Iceland will benefit from the work which SFO has already undertaken in relation the subsidiaries of Kaupthing in the UK.
However, Joly emphasizes that the center of the investigation should be in Reykjavík since this is an Icelandic investigation led by Icelanders. “This is the largest investigation in history on an economic and banking collapse,” she stated.
Click here to read more about Eva Joly and the special prosecutor’s investigation.
