Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's Icelog

Last year, Kaupthing’s second largest shareholder Ólafur Ólafsson was sentenced in February 2015 to 4 1/2 years in prison in the so-called al Thani case. After a change in the law on imprisonment shortened the time prisoners have to spend in prison under certain circumstances, Ólafsson was recently released to a half-way house in Reykjavík. He is now electronically tagged but can go to work – he is still one of the wealthiest men in Iceland and owns inter alia a large shipping company, Samskip.

Yesterday, a helicopter accident drew some attention to Ólafsson: it turned out he was on a sightseeing flight together with three foreign business partners and a pilot when the helicopter came down. All on board were injured but none of them suffered life-threatening injuries.

The helicopter, owned by Ólafsson and registered in Switzerland, according the Stundin, though a Danish and a Swiss company. Allegedly, the helicopter has been used a lot lately, allegedly twice turning off the device that allows the helicopter to be tracked.

According to Stundin a group of hikers saw a helicopter eight hours before the crash, flying in a dangerously daring way, close to the scene of the accident. It’s not been confirmed if the helicopter observed was the one owned by Ólafsson.

The accident has also drawn the attention of authorities to the fact that tagged prisoners can in theory travel abroad – it’s not banned – as long as they are back at 9pm. The reason foreign travel isn’t forbidden is only because it’s not until now that there have been prisoners wealthy enough to own their own planes. This will now be taken up.

The Icelandic magasine Séð og heart has now pointed at a weird coincidence. Ólafsson has a very close business partner, Hjörleifur Jakobsson, who like Ólafsson moved to Switzerland, has in general been closely involved in Ólafsson’s business ventures for decades and has often been called Ólafsson’s right hand in Icelandic media.

It turns out that as the Icelandic Prison Service is starved for funds it has outsourced the electronic tagging and the surveillance involved to a company called “Öryggismiðstöðin,” which is owned by no  other than Ólafsson’s right hand man, Jakobsson. The magasine is not alleging that Jakobson’s company is granting Ólafsson any favours, merely pointing out that such coincidences can happen in little Iceland.

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