Further SFO retreat re Robert Tchenguiz
The news is out over the weekend that the Serious Fraud Office has withdrawn bail conditions regarding Robert Tchenguiz, Kaupthing’s largest borrower who at the collapse of the bank owed the bank over €2bn. The FT (subscription needed) quotes a lawyer who thinks this might mean that no further action will follow. However, it’s difficult to make sense of the SFO actions if, after losing judicial review to Robert and declaring a continued investigation against Robert, the SFO would now be retreating on that. My understanding is that bail is deemed to be of no practical use. That view is taken up in the Guardian coverage of this latest move in the SFO Tchenguiz saga.
In Iceland the Office of the Special Prosecutor is prosecuting Kaupthing managers regarding the Qatari investment of 5.1% in Kaupthing in September 2008 (which has an interesting parallel in the Qatari investment in Barclays in 2008; another story for another day). It is also understood that the OSP could well sue Kaupthing managers for other actions.
The main difference between what the SFO is doing and the OSP is that OSP has, so far, only charged bank managers, not the big borrowers.
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[…] have earlier pointed out the similarities between the Kaupthing connections with the Qatari investor Sheikh […]
Barclays, Kaupthing and the Qatari investors at Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's Icelog
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