More than a year and a half after Iceland’s major banks failed, all but sinking the country’s economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives and owners face a two-billion-dollar lawsuit. Since Iceland’s three largest banks — Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir — collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners have largely been living untroubled lives abroad. But the publication last month of a parliamentary inquiry into the island nation’s profound financial and economic crisis signaled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank heads who had taken ‘inappropriate loans from the banks’ they worked for. On Wednesday, the administrators of Glitnir’s liquidation announced they had filed a two-billion-dollar (1.6-billion-euro) lawsuit in a New York court against former large shareholders and executives for alleged fraud. ‘I think this lawsuit is without precedence in Iceland,’ Steinunn Gudbjartsdottir, who chairs Glitnir’s so-called winding-up board, told reporters in Reykjavik. ‘It is about higher figures than we have ever seen,’ she said, adding that she expected Glitnir to file more lawsuits going forward, but that ‘it is unlikely any will be this […]
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Bankers Jailed, Sued As Iceland Seeks Culprits For Crisis
Author:
Source: Agence France-Presse (France)
Publication Date: May 12 01:44 PM US/Eastern
Link: Bankers Jailed, Sued As Iceland Seeks Culprits For Crisis
Source: Agence France-Presse (France)
Publication Date: May 12 01:44 PM US/Eastern
Link: Bankers Jailed, Sued As Iceland Seeks Culprits For Crisis
Stephan: This is what we should be doing with the gamblers who brought our society to its financial knees.