Iceland’s Parliament has voted against permitting MPs to put forth questions about Lindarhvoll, a company founded by the Finance Ministry in 2016 to handle assets acquired by the government after Iceland’s banking collapse, RÚV reports. Opposition MPs call for an internal report of the company from 2018 to be made public, which the Auditor General has opposed.
Social-Democratic Alliance MP Jóhann Páll Jóhannsson and Pirate Party MP Bjön Leví Gunnarsson, both submitted questions about the 2018 report last week. “Yesterday, the Independence Party, the Left-Greens and the Progressive Party used their majority power in the Alþingi to forbid me to ask the Speaker of the Alþingi about a report that deals with [current Finance Minister] Bjarni Benediktsson’s sale of tens of billions worth of state assets through the private limited company Lindarhvoll ehf.,” Jóhann Páll wrote on Facebook. “The report was prepared by an official of Alþingi, on behalf of the public, with public funds, and deals with the sale of public assets. The question remains: what is it that the public is not allowed to see?”
The Auditor General has opposed the document being made public as it was never written for publication, but rather only for internal use. He also noted that the office submitted a final report on Lindarhvoll in 2020.
