Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's Icelog

Today, the Reykjavík District Court ruled in the most extensive banking case so far, a case of market manipulation and loans to Kevin Stanford and other businessmen to buy shares in Kaupthing, alleged to have part of the market manipulation by Kaupthing senior managers.

This is a complicated case, where the Office of Special Prosecutor went through, in court, months of trades to show a pattern they claimed was consistent with charges of market manipulation. – The judgement will no doubt be appealed by those who were sentenced.

Sigurður Einarsson ex-chairman of the board of Kaupthing was sentenced to a year. Hreiðar Már Sigurðsson, the banks CEO at the time, was found guilty but not sentenced to prison because he has already been sentenced in another case, the al Thani case. According to Rúv, Einarsson sentence will be added to the four years he was sentenced to in the al Thani case. Ingólfur Helgason, Kaupthing manager of Icelandic operations was sentenced to 4 1/2 year. Magnús Guðmundsson manager of Kauphing’s Luxembourg operations was acquitted as was another employee, Björk Þórarinsdóttir member of Kaupthing’s credit committee. Bjarki Diego credit officer at the time was sentenced to 2 1/2 year. Three employees, who carried out the relevant trades, got suspended sentences of 18 months to two year.

One thing, which has proved valuable in this case as in other similar cases, is phone tabs. Interestingly, they have all been done after the collapse.

A complicated case – and contrary to what some seem to think Iceland has a similar legislation regarding market manipulation and other financial fraud as other Western countries. The difference is that there is a will to prosecute these cases: they are time-consuming to investigate but it is perfectly doable and the stories are simple. The fact that big banks are too big to investigate in other countries is only because there is a lack of appetite among authorities and politicians – there really is no other reason, no other explanation.

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The ongoing case against nine Kaupthing managers and staff gives an intriguing insight into the bank’s extensive buying and selling of own shares, which the Office of the Special Prosecutor claims involves market manipulation and breach of fiduciary duty. Witness statements by foreign employees have been especially informative.

In a witness statement today Jan Petter Sissener former head of Kaupthing Norway said he had not had faith in Kaupthing’s annual accounts for 2007. Irked by the bank’s reporting on buying and selling of own shares he asked a law firm in London to look at the bank’s activities from the point of view of international business ethics.

The firm concluded the bank’s behavior was entirely unacceptable. Sissener said that following heated conversation with Kaupthing’s CEO Hreiðar Már Sigurðsson, one of the nine charged now, and the bank’s chief legal officer Helgi Sigurðsson these trades had been stopped for a while but then later resumed again. Sissener left Kaupthing in February 2008 because of these differences of opinion regarding Kaupthing’s reporting on proprietary trading in own shares, which the bank funded to a large extent as shown extensively in the SIC report in 2010.

Another foreign employee, Nick Holton, an international compliance officer with Kaupthing, resigned at the end of July 2008, following a disagreement with senior management. Holton wanted to make some changes but failed to secure support. He said he had had serious doubts about what was going on and wondered at the time whether it was due to negligence or lack of organization. In addition, he worried about his own reputation after working for Kaupthing. He said he had pointed out to the chief legal officer that trading in own shares was illegal in many countries. Holton said it had come as a surprise when he realized that Kaupthing owned 4% of own shares but he did not know at the time that Kaupthing had funded big purchases of its shares for clients nor was he aware of losses stemming from these transactions.

Niels de Connick-Smith, a Danish business man, who sat on the board of Kaupthing, said that as far as he knew Kaupthing’s purchase of own shares had not been discussed on the board.

Senior Kaupthing managers now charged – Sigurður Einarsson, Hreiðar Már Sigurðsson and Magnús Guðmundsson, all of them already in prison following a judgment in the al Thani case – have all been questioned. They deny all charges. The same goes for Ingólfur Helgason, formerly the CEO of Kaupthing Iceland.

The five employees, charged in this case, who carried out the trades said they did so on orders, mostly from Ingólfur Helgason. Helgason denies having operated on his own but would have taken orders, mostly from Sigurðsson. Einarsson claims that being the chairman of the board meant he had no direct involvement in transactions of this type and consequently they would have been outside of his horizon.

Parking shares

The prosecutor has played informative recordings from phone tappings. In one of them the bank’s chief legal officer is talking about transactions in 2008 where the bank lent over ISK10bn, to an offshore company, Desulo Trading owned by an Icelandic business man, Egill Ágústsson. Desulo Trading then bought Kaupthing shares; over a few months it bought 2% of the bank. According to the legal officer the bank was “literally parking the shares” in what he called quite “clearly fictive trades.”

The owner of Desulo Trading has said in an earlier witness statement that he was not told of these transactions and was quite shocked when he saw the substantial loans issued to his company. One Kaupthing Luxembourg employee said the company was, in the end, quite obviously “just like a dustbin” in the bank. Apart from loans to Desulo Trading two other companies are involved in this case, also belonging to big Kaupthing clients, Holt Investment owned by Luxembourg investor Skúli Þorvaldsson and Mata Investments, owned by Gísli V. Einarsson and his family.

Þorvaldsson is charged in another case regarding embezzlement from Kaupthing, together with Sigurðsson, Guðmundsson and Guðný Arna Sveinsdóttir Kaupthing’s chief financial officer, seen to have been very close to the Kaupthing management.

In total, Kaupthing sold almost 18% of the bank’s share in seven large transactions shortly before it collapsed, in all cases funding the share purchase with Kaupthing loans. The largest transaction was when a Qatari sheikh bought 5,1% for which the three above mentioned managers and Ólafur Ólafsson, the bank’s second largest shareholder, are now serving 3 to 5 1/2 years in prison in the so-called al Thani case.

I have earlier stated that I wonder if anything like this was going on in other banks up to the crisis. Here, some Irish banks come to mind re loans to ten shareholders in Anglo Irish. An Irish Court found two bankers guilty but they were not sent to prison because the judge found regulators had failed to warn the bankers of the illegal activity. Icelandic senior bankers have been less lucky.

*This report is based on Rúv reporting on the ongoing case, found here, in Icelandic.

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Today, the Icelandic Supreme Court annulled the Reykjavík District Court acquittal in the Aurum case. This means that the District Court has to start all over again on the case. Those charged are Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson and Lárus Welding who became Glitnir’s CEO when Jóhannesson and a group of investors bought over 30% in the bank in spring 2007. Two other Glitnir employees are also charged.

At the centre of the case is a loan from Glitnir to a shelf company, FS38 to buy a share in the retailer Goldsmith, owned by Aurum Holding, from Fons, owned by Pálmi Haraldsson, a business associate of Jóhannesson. Haraldsson was i.a. a co-investor in Glitnir with Jóhannesson, where the duo were close up and intimate with the management. So much so that Welding at some point, in an email to Jóhannesson, complained that he was being treated like a branch manager and not the CEO.

The particulars of this whole loan arrangement was that after various evaluations of Goldsmith, Glitnir lent ISK6bn to FS38; it so happened that of the 6bn ISK1bn landed on Haraldsson’s account with Glitnir and an equal amount landed on Jóhannesson’s personal account.

The FS38 loan saga was already familiar from the SIC report, published in April 2010, one of many SIC’s loan sagas related to the major shareholders of the three banks. The four were charged by the Office of the Special Prosecutor. When the case came up in the District Court it was presided over by two District Court Judges the third one being a Court-appointed external expert, Sverrir Ólafsson.

In June last year the Court acquitted all four charged in the Aurum case. Soon after, it transpired that Ólafsson was the brother of Ólafur Ólafsson, at the time already sentenced by the District Court in the so-called al Thani case. Ólafur is now serving a sentence of 4 1/2 years after the Supreme Court sentenced him last January (thereby adding a year to Ólafsson’s sentence in the District Court). Foreigners always think that in Iceland everyone knows everybody, which definitely was not the case with the Ólafsson brothers – special prosecutor Ólafur Þ. Hauksson denied he had known about the relationship (and yes, Ólafsson is a very common name in Iceland and the two brothers are not at all similar) nor had the Icelandic media picked this up.

Following the revelation, Sverrir Ólafsson said in an interview with Rúv that it was inconceivable Hauksson and the OSP had not been aware of whose brother he was. According to Sverrir the fuss was only to undermine the judgement. In this interview Ólafsson used harsh words about Hauksson, seen by many as somewhat unsuited for a judge, even a lay one.

Following the District Court ruling in the Aurum case the state prosecutor (a different authority from the OSP) demanded that the judgement should be annulled because of doubt of the impartiality of one of the judges. Today, this is exactly what the Supreme Court did, which means that now the case must start anew, probably adding at least another year and probably more to the story of this case.

In addition to this the Glitnir Winding up Board has sued Jóhannesson and others for damages caused by the FS38 loan. In connection to that case, and at the demand of Glitnir, Jóhannesson’s assets were subjected to an international freezing order by a London Court in May 2010 (see here, here and here). The Glitnir case is resting until a final judgement in the criminal case; as far as is known the freezing order is still standing. However, Jóhannesson is again an active investor, i.a. in the UK but investing on behalf of his wife.

Recently, there have been articles in Icelandic on the website Vísir and in the newspaper (distributed for free) Fréttablaðið owned by 365 Media, under the ownership of Ingibjörg Pálmadóttir, wife of Jóhannesson. These articles have been insinuating lies on behalf of the Special Prosecutor regarding Ólafsson, i.e. stating that Hauksson and others at the OSP did indeed know whose brother Sverrir Ólafsson was. Earlier, the paper had also sought to sow doubt of the al Thani judgement; the sentence in one of its articles, saying that when the Courts fail the media must take over, was much noted. No doubt, Jóhannesson and his allies will fight their case ferociously, not only in the Courts but also in the media in the Jóhannesson’s sphere of influence.

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As reported earlier on Icelog, the French investigative judge Renaud van Ruymbeke is conducting an investigation of Landsbanki Luxembourg activities in France regarding the bank’s equity release loans. With the investigation ongoing it was assumed that the bank’s liquidator Yvette Hamilius would suspend recovering assets by sending bailiffs to the bank’s customers in France.

This however has not been the case as the Luxembourg Paperjam reports (yet again by Véronique Pujoul who has followed this case diligently) and Icelog has heard. Lawyers for the clients are now asking if this could be seen as both harassment from the administrator and also constitute a contempt of the French Courts with an ongoing investigation where charges have been brought.

Icelog has earlier reported extensively on this saddest part of the Icelandic banking collapse saga. What is truly shocking is the utter and complete disregard Luxembourg authorities have shown the clients who have at length described their dealings with the bank and administrator, i.a. conflicting messages from the administrator on outstanding debt. Part of the scheme were investments, which the clients have questioned as they got more understanding of them as well as being kept in the dark about the administrator’s handling of the investments.

Instead, the Luxembourg state prosecutor has, without any investigation, placed himself firmly on the side of the administrator by claiming that the clients were only trying to evade paying back their loans. This behavior by a public prosecutor in a European country is utterly inconceivable.

Although investigations into the banks are ongoing in Iceland, with serious charges and severe prison sentences, Luxembourg has done nothing to investigate the Icelandic operations in Luxembourg, i.a. that of Landsbanki. Yet, the Icelandic investigations show that in many of the worst cases, such as in the so-called the al Thani case, the schemes were partly planned and carried out in the Icelandic banks in Luxembourg. In many cases, the alleged and proven criminal wrongdoings by the Icelandic banks could not have been done without their Luxembourg operations. Yet, Luxembourg ignores the banking problems in its own front yard.

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“I’m just doing it for you guys,” Birkir Kristinsson was caught on tape saying to one of his fellow bankers at Glitnir. Kristinsson, the brother of Magnús Kristinsson – owner of fishing industries in the Vestman islands and a big borrower in the Icelandic banks – has been sentenced to five years in prison together with three Glitnir colleague two of whom also got the same prison sentence. The fourth was sentenced to four years in prison. Kristinsson has appealed and so will the three others most likely do.

This case is not one of the big ones involving major investors or bank managers and the numbers are not as high as in some of the other cases, most noticeably the al Thani case. It was however an important judgement because there are other similar cases snarling their way through courts.

Three Glitnir employees – Elmar Svavarsson, Jóhannes Baldursson and Magnús Arnar Arngrímsson (also accused in the Aurum case, acquitted in the Reykjavík District Court; case appealed to Supreme Court) – were indicted for loans to a fourth Glitnir employee, Birkir Kristinsson.

The loans, totaling ISK3.6bn, €23m, were issued between December 2007 and July 2008 to a company owned by Kristinsson, used to buy shares in Glitnir, thereby effectively creating a misleading share price. In addition, the three employees ignored the bank’s rules on lending. Later, the three made sure Glitnir i.a. bought back own shares at double the market price to insulate Kristinsson’s company from losses. Kristinsson was indicted for participating in the scheme.

Svavarsson and Baldursson, as well as Kristinsson were sentenced to five years in prison and Arngrímsson to four years. They were sentenced for market manipulation and breach of fiduciary duty. The four bankers are, with the exception of Birkir Kristinsson, not household names in Iceland. However, this is yet another banking-collapse case from the Office of the Special Prosecutor. Since there are other similar cases this verdict is indicative but none of these cases is over until ruled on by the Supreme Court.

The verdict, from June 22, is here, in Icelandic.

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Today, I was interviewed both on BBC radio 5 live and BBC radio 2 regarding bankers being sentenced to prison in Iceland. On both stations I was asked why bankers are being prosecuted in Iceland. I would rather turn that question around? Why are bankers not being investigated – and eventually charged, if there is a case against them – in other countries, for example in Britain?

Lets imagine that a huge big building crashes in the centre of London. Luckily, no one gets killed but damages run to millions, the whole area is disrupted, causing further financial damages and troubles for people and businesses for weeks and months and even years. How would this incident be treated? Would the authorities just say that this was tough luck and let it be? No, I very much doubt it. This incident would be investigated to the core and no one would rest until the cause was found. Also to make sure other buildings could not just suddenly and unexpectedly collapse. If it was then found there was willful negligence, corners cut to make more money and there would be emails and other evidence to show it those to blame would be prosecuted and their case brought to court.

The financial collapse, not just in Iceland but here in the UK and elsewhere was like a huge big building – indeed many of them – crashing. No, no one died but the financial damage has been great, shocks and after-shocks, lives and societies disrupted and upset.

Following the collapse of the three largest banks in Iceland in October 2008, the parliament decided on two things: one, to set up a special investigative commission, the SIC commission, that would clarify all aspects of the collapse, causes and failures in the running up to the collapse. This report, 2600 pages in 9 volumes (with some digital appendixes) came out in April 2012.

The chapters on the banks tell well documented stories of their lending practices, how some of the largest shareholders used the banks like their private banks, loans against no or weak collaterals, lending beyond legal limits and so on. A true thriller beating all financial fiction.

The other measure was to set up an office of a special prosecutor. No one applied. Finally, a sherif from Akranes, a small town on the bay opposite Reykjavík, was talked into taking on the job, Ólafur Þór Hauksson. He had no experience and no resources. Eva Joly was brought to Iceland to tell Icelanders and the authorities that staff and resources would be needed, this would take a long time and be costly. Eventually, three other prosecutors were hired and when the Office was at its biggest there were over 100 people working there. Now it’s being reduced and the cuts of the new centre-right government have also been sensed there.

Already in the SIC report there were stories that raised questions about possible criminal activities. The al Thani loan saga was one of them. Further, the OSP has now charged the top managers in all the three banks. The al Thani case was the first big case to reach sentencing. The three Kaupthing managers now sentenced are also charged in another large market manipulation case, as are managers from Landsbanki and Glitnir (on both cases see here).

Ólafur Ólafsson, Kaupthing’s second largest shareholder, was also charged in the al Thani case and now sentenced. Other earlier high-fliers charged earlier are Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, Glitnir’s largest shareholder and also Hannes Smárason, once a close business partner of Jóhannesson and then recently called in by Kári Stefánsson CEO of the genome company deCode, where Smárason was once a CFO, to run a company in the US. After the charges Smárason stepped down from the post.

But what about the UK? The Serious Fraud Office investigated Kaupthing but dropped the investigation after serious mistakes were done. Libor rigging was at first only investigated as if it was a natural disaster so no person was culpable. A bank rigged Libor, a bank got fined – and yet a bank is made up of people who think, plan and act.

The SFO is now investigating Libor rigging as possibly criminal activities and some people have been charged. Who are these people? Traders and others who actually carried out the alleged criminal activities. Are we to believe that they took up this pastime of fixing libor just for the fun of it? However it could happen it means that those in charge of these banks did a rather poor job of overseeing them. Shouldn’t that failure be investigated?

Every day seems to bring news of banks being fined – there are record fines, ever bigger fines, ever more serious deeds and banks are still more willing to buy sovereign bonds or some financial product with the cheap money they get from governments rather than dirtying their hands on servicing companies. There is libor rigging, money laundering, selling swaps that customers lose money on, currency rate rigging and alleged driving companies into bankruptcy rather than helping them to restructure – all of these “oversights” are treated as if they were carried out by machines and systems, not by reasoning and calculating people of flesh and blood. And for some reason shareholders patiently see their dividend capped by fines and yet say nothing.

When asked about the ongoing investigations in Iceland by non-Icelandic journalist they often seem to assume that there is something special about bankers being investigated; that this is somehow because something is different in Iceland, perhaps the law, perhaps that smallness. No, there is nothing special about Iceland in this respect. Deeds were done, they looked suspicious, there are laws against which these deeds can be tested and then a prosecutor brings charges if there are enough reasons to assume something criminal could have been going on. This is normal if someone robs a car or causes something as disastrous as a house collapse. When banks and banking systems collapsed it suddenly seemed something else had gone on. The strange thing is not why bankers are being prosecuted in Iceland – but why this is not happening elsewhere to the same degree.

PS Anrigaut, an Icelog reader has pointed out to me that Max Keiser has copied and pasted this log on his website but without attributing it to Icelog. I asked him (via Twitter and in a comment on his website) to add a link to the Icelog article. My tweet has now been added to his website.

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The Office of Special Prosecutor in Iceland has brought charges in two large market manipulation cases – one against  Kaupthing managers, another against Landsbanki managers. Those charged re Kaupthing are, according to Icelandic media, are Kaupthing’s chairman Sigurdur Einarsson, CEO Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, Ingolfur Helgason director of Kaupthing Iceland, Magnus Gudmundsson director of Kaupthing Luxembourg, Bjarki Diego head of lending, three so far unnamed employees in prop trading and one in retail banking.

From Landsbanki there are CEO Sigurjon Arnason, Elin Sigfussdottir and four traders. The charges have not been published yet.

Allegedly, these cases centre on how the banks themselves, through various channels, owned a large part of the banks’ shares, meaning that market movements did not at all reflect the reality. I expect the charges to come out later this week and will then write about these cases in detail.

So far, no large case has surfaced regarding Landsbanki although the SIC report mentions many interesting transactions related to that bank, as well as the other banks. Icelog has earlier reported on another large Kaupthing case, the so-called al Thani case (here is a link to earlier Icelogs on that case).

According to the SIC report, 74-80% of trades on the Icelandic Stock Exchange were generated by the three banks. According to Icelandic media, some well known cases are connected to the new charges, such as a company called Imon, allegedly used to influence Landsbanki shares. Here is an earlier Icelog where Imon is part of the story and gives an idea what has been investigated.

An interesting aspect of these cases is that the alleged manipulation started well before 2008. This is made very clear in the SIC report.

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Tonight, BBC’s Panorama shed further light on the investment in Barclays, made by Middle Eastern investors in autumn 2008 – an investment that has some striking similarities with the investment from the same part of the world in Kaupthing in September 2008. At that time, Kaupthing managers proudly announced that a Qatari investor, Sheihk Mohammed bin Khalifa al Thani, had so much faith in the bank that he had bought 5.1% of the bank’s shares.

Only later did it transpire that the faith in Kaupthing wasn’t quite as strong as the statements indicated. Kaupthing lent money to companies connected to the Sheikh and allegedly channeled $50m, an in-advance profit, to a company controlled by the Sheikh. As reported earlier on Icelog the Office of the Special Prosecutor in Iceland has charged ex Kaupthing managers – Sigurdur Einarsson, Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson and Magnus Gudmundsson – and the bank’s second largest shareholder at the time Olafur Olafsson – for alleged misdoings related to this investment. The Sheikh has not been charged in this loan saga.

Interestingly, the Panorama programme indicated that allegedly and as far as it could be gauged from Barclays public documents the Abu Dhabi sovereign investment fund made the investment whereas profit went into an offshore company controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

An FT article on Qatari debt illustrates Qatar’s toughness in squeezing as much as possible out of every deal and the global power they derive from their financial strength. According to the FT “Qatar is notorious for trying to get something for nothing,” says one observer of the region’s financial institutions. “You have to almost pay them to do the deal.” Indeed an interesting statement in view of the Kaupthing Qatari deal. The Panorama programme indicates this toughness might apply to some of their neighours as well.

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I have earlier pointed out the similarities between the Kaupthing connections with the Qatari investor Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al Thani and Barclays contacts with another al Thani and Qatari investors. As recounted in some details here, with Kaupthing documents, the Kaupthing saga with the Qatari investor, who bought shares in Kaupthing in September 2008 publicised at the time as showing the Qatari faith in Kaupthing, was indeed a saga of a very favourable Kaupthing loan to the Qatari investor.

This saga had surfaced in the Icelandic media but was fully documented in the SIC report in April 2010 and more recently in charges brought by the Office of the Special Prosecutor against three Kaupthing managers – Sigurdur Einarsson, Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson and Magnus Gudmundsson and Kaupthing’s second largest shareholder at the time, Olafur Olafsson. It did more than strife my mind if the Qatari share-buying in Barclays mirrored the Kaupthing story: that Barclays had lent them the money. Now the FT (subscription) is writing that this is indeed being investigated.

A recent Bloomberg article on the Libor probe refers to an investigation against Barclays chief financial officer Chris Lucas related to “payments made to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the bank revealed last year.” Lucas, who had sought anonymity in the Libor investigations, is also mentioned in the FT article.

As the rumours about alleged fraud started surfacing after the Icelandic bank collapse in 2008 I heard various Icelandic bankers maintain, rather miffed, that they had not done anything differently from bankers in other banks. These words are now taking on a new meaning as we get more insight into what was actually going on in other banks, especially in the UK.

The Icelandic banking saga was laid open in the Icelandic SIC report. Unfortunately, no similar work has been done in the UK or elsewhere, with one exception: the only work comparable to the SIC report, that I am aware of, is Anton Valukas report on Lehman (earlier Icelog on Valukas’ Lehman report here), which was both extensive and thorough and a fantastic read. Recently, Valukas, in his first interview (CBS 60 Minutes) on the Lehman report, has expressed his surprise that no action has been taken against Lehman managers on the basis of his report.

The alleged Barclays deal with the Qatari is yet another addition to an ever more extensive saga of widespread questionable dealings within banks, showing a staggering lack of morality and integrity. These men were not only handsomely remunerated but in some cases knighted – and so far, the bill has been passed on to shareholders whereas none of the doers has been held accountable. That could be changing now with the Libor probe but it is still too early to say if charges will be more successfully pressed than in the SFO case against Kaupthing.

*Feb 3: Chris Lucas, Barclays finance officer for almost six years, is stepping down later this year, according to Sky News. It is unclear what sort of a leaving pay-packet he takes with him. – FT reports that Barclays general counsel Mark Harding is also leaving.

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The Office of the Special Prosecutor in Iceland has charged Jon Asgeir Johannesson former CEO of Baugur and a major UK retail investor for his role in a Glitnir loan of ISK6bn (now £40m) in summer 2008. Johannesson is charged for exerting undue influence on Glitnir CEO Larus Welding and Bjarni Johannesson who was in charge of connection to Johannesson’s companies. A third Glitnir employee, Magnus Arnar Arngrimsson is also being charged. The charges related to the three Glitnir employee regard breach of fiduciary duty.

This case, called the Aurum case because the collaterals for the loan were shares in Aurum, formerly Goldsmith, the UK jewelry chain. This was essentially a series of transactions, which in the end brought ISK1bn in cash onto Johannesson’s account with Glitnir and the same amount to his business partner Palmi Haraldsson, who is not charged. According to the charges, the purpose of the loan was to find a way to settle Johannesson’s overdraft with Glitnir, in addition to cash and to enable Haraldsson to get money as well. The OSP is asking for the maximum sentence, a six year prison. Johannesson denies all wrong-doing. In the charges it is stated that both Johannesson and Welding live in the UK.

The tendency here, according to the OSP, is the same as in so many other questionable loans to the major shareholders: the loans were very favorable to the borrower and equally unfavorable to the lender.

The Aurum case has long been known to the Icelandic public, ia from the SIC report and from loan agreements, which had landed in the public domain. Earlier Icelogs on this case can be found here. A link to the charges, in Icelandic, is here. Oral hearing is scheduled to start January 7.

In addition to this case, the OSP has brought charges against Kaupthing managers in the so-called al Thani case. So far, Landsbanki managers or major shareholders of Landsbanki have not been charged.

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