A report related to the sale of public assets that has been shrouded in secrecy will now likely be made public, thanks to a two-year-old legal opinion, RÚV reports. The Speaker’s Committee of Parliament is required to hand over a report made by the Auditor General in 2018 on the dealings of Lindarhvoll ehf., a private limited company created to sell public assets acquired by the state in the aftermath of the banking collapse. An ongoing lawsuit asserts Lindarhvoll did not get the best possible price for the public assets it sold.
Report’s author calls for its publication
The legal opinion in question was carried out for the Speaker’s Committee over two years ago by law firm Magna but was only made public last week. According to RÚV, the committee decided to make the 2018 report public in April of last year, but Speaker of Parliament and Independence Party MP Birgir Ármannsson has stood in the way. Birgir asserts that the articles pertaining to freedom of information do not apply to the report as it is an internal document that was never meant for the public.
The report’s author, then-Auditor General Sigurður Þórðarson, has called for it to be made public. Opposition MPs have also called for its publication.
Committee members never received copy of report
Lindarhvoll was founded by the Finance Ministry in 2016 to handle assets acquired by the government after Iceland’s banking collapse, worth up to ISK 100 billion [$708 million, €664 million]. In 2018, when the assets had been sold, Lindarhvoll was dissolved and Sigurður’s report was submitted to the Speaker’s Committee. Nevertheless, committee members never received a copy of the report and were only permitted to look at it in a closed room, without their phones or any writing implements.
Lawsuit against Lindarhvoll ongoing
In 2020, Frigus II ehf. sued Lindarhvoll and the Icelandic state for ISK 651 million [$4.6 million, €4.3 million] due to the sale of Klakka ehf. (previous called Exista) to another company. According to Frigus, the company’s purchase offer for Klakka ehf. was rejected in favour of an offer that did not fulfil the conditions of the sale. If that assertion proves true, it would mean Lindarhvoll did not necessarily act in the public’s best interest in the sale of public assets. Other internal documents from Lindarhvoll have been handed over to Frigus II in the ongoing case.
The ties between Frigus and Klakka go beyond the sale that is the lawsuit’s focus. Frigus II is owned by Sigurður Valtýsson, who is the former CEO of Exista, as well as brothers Ágúst and Lýður Guðmundsson, who had a 45% stake in Exista before the banking collapse through their company Bakkavör.
Whether and when the 2018 report on Lindarhvoll will be published has yet to be determined.
