Ingolfur Helgason, the former Director of Kaupthing Iceland, and Steingrimur Karason, former CEO of the bank’s risk management department, were both arrested today upon arriving back in Iceland. They went straight to interrogation with the Special Prosecutor and are being held in police cells.
Helgason and Karason were both very near the top of the Kaupthing chain-of-command and worked closely with former Director, Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson and Sigurdur Einarsson, the former Chairman of the Board. It is not yet known whether the Special Prosecutor will allow the pair to be released, or if he will request that the Reykjavik District Court remand them in custody, as happened with Sigurdsson and Magnus Gudmundsson (former CEO of Kaupthing Luxembourg), Visir.is reports.
Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson and Magnus Gudmundsson were arrested last Friday and remain in the Litla Hraun prison; but Sigurdur Einarsson has not obeyed the Special Prosecutor’s summons to return to Iceland for interrogation this Friday – despite a promise that he would not be arrested upon arrival. He has, however, invited the Special Prosecutor, Olafur Thor Hauksson to fly out and interrogate him in the UK.
Money and greed! I am not in favor of death penalty however, these people and others around the world must be bought to a fair justice. What is fair. I am not certain I can answer that, as gee, money is just paper, but when we break it down into the fear, the hurt, the anxiety people carry over money one must say that the penalty should be harsh.
Oh, and if you don’t like Madoff as an example, perhaps Stanford is a better fit? He’s locked up pending trial with his assets frozen.
>All of these make Icelandic bankers — despite them lending to related partys without relaizing systemic risk of that — and also near the end desprate share buying of their own shares schemese seem like nothing.
Those banks were systematically looted – it was a deliberate and informed action, not a naive mistake.
Maybe Iceland will get around to prosecuting the people involved (those that benefited, not their employees). Maybe those people will allow themselves to be brought to trial. Maybe Iceland will convict them. Don’t hold your breath though.
The Book being “The Big Short
Inside the doomsday machine”
by Michael Lewis.
( He is the man that wrote that good article in Vanity Fair on the Icelandic crash, in 2009. )
++The Wall Street Banks did know it was fraud but still this banks led by Merrill Lynch did get the rating agency particualrlyS&P and even Moodys Corp to rate mezzanine CDOs as double A, when in fact it was made up of 80% risky triple-B-rated loans.
( and then did give it to CDO managers like Harding Advisory represeneted by Wing Chau in the book to sell on to investors in Europe and Asia)
” ..fully 80 percent of the CDO composed of nothing but triple-B bonds was rated higher than triple-B: triple-A, double-A, or A. ”
So something that just needed 7% of loans of underlying loans to go bad for the whole CDO to be worth less.
“… the sorts of investors who handed their money to Wing Chau, and thus bought the triple-A-rated tranche of CDOs–German banks, Taiwanese insurance companies, Japanese farmers’ unions, European pension funds, and, in general, entities more or less required to invest in triple-A-rated bonds–did so precisely because they were meant to be foolproof, impervious to losses, and unnecessary to monitor or even think about very much”
Icelanders did not have anything to do with the CDO madeness except for a smallish CDO investment by Kaupthing that soon was shut down.
Ours was far less risky stuff like British Retail shops and lending to Russian business ess men ( not the other way round ).
+– but that is nothing next to of course the pension ponzi schemese running in many european contries where the vitcims who paid in for many years will see they benefits cut when they retire because it is a scheme where it is paid from current tax revnues and nothing was actually invested of that money.
That is what so called ” AgeQuake ” is all about.
Madoff ran the most long running and largest affinity ponzi scheme the US has ever seen+.
However he was not a Wall Street bank owner or director. Yes he was high up in NASD the people behind NASDAQ before but he was not a Wall Street bank director or worker.
Am surprised to see this , Brumley that you are playing hit and run ” games ” of misdirection.
What this ” Matt Cover” did say is true — those that did perpetrate the CDOs++ from 2005- 2007 at Wall Street banks did know full well they were fraud. And there are not even investigations going on into it by SEC and others.
Instead there was money given to the bankers in bail outs — where there wasnt even a loss to sharehodlers, directors were not fired and the game of music scams can continue.
Many of these were sold the European investors and lesser degeree Asian ones — particularly to German investors in the smaller regional banks.
Then we have the investments of banks in UK such as RBS and in Ireland AIB where what they did with related lending and just plain lending money to developers who would never be able to finish building let alone sell houses built..
All of these make Icelandic bankers — despite them lending to related partys without relaizing systemic risk of that — and also near the end desprate share buying of their own shares schemese seem like nothing.
But of course the behavior was not nothing. so those people are being arrested by Icelandic special prsecutor and charges thanks to dilgence and proper advice of Eva Joly and her team norwegian and French investigators.
>At least Iceland is making banking arrests. On Wall St . . .
You’ve got it the wrong way around. Madoff has been tried and jailed, which is more than can be said for anyone of note in Iceland.
At least Iceland is making banking arrests. On Wall St. where the current multi-trillion dollar economic catastrophe originated there hasn’t been even a single arrest and it’s unlikely there ever will be. How crazy is that?
And STILL innocent people who put their money in an Isle of Man bank, which advertised itself as being safe are living on the streets.
It is coming up to the two year aniversary of life on the streets for me. After losing my 30 years of work savings, then my house and then my family no-one gives a damn. One confirmed suicide so far, and three other unconfirmed. Yet, those responsible (and I inlcude members of the British Government of the day; Alistair Darling, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, Ian Pearson, Baron von Myners and Hector Sants) still have their freedom and have probably long forgotten the 8th of October 2010.
I can never forget. Ir is when everything I lived for – family, warmth, food, a future – was taken away from me.
Dave
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/08/19/former-kaupthing-boss-returns-to-iceland-for-questioning/
Do let all those who participated and benefitted on the bank collapsed and future of Iceland be responsible of their acts. A great damaged to all.
Does Iceland have the death penalty? These scum who are currently being arrested (including those currently sunning it up in London, blissfully unaware their mugshots are on Interpol most-wanted lists) not only dragged Iceland into the mire of being a global pariah but destroyed the lives and families (aided and abetted by Alistair Darling, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, Ian Pearson, Paul Myners and Hector Sants in the UK) of thousands.
I have always been against the death penalty and have never harned a human being in my life, but after what those scum did to me and my family I would happily spend my last dollar on a beer to toast the death of any one of them, And I reckon that many people around the world, Icelanders included, would join me.
Go Island !! Dont let them boss you around, JAIL THE LOT!
Listen, Icelander’s, we have ‘loads’ of hemp rope here in the good old torture gulag we could lend you for a few, uh, special publically televised executions of corrupt bankster scum, just as long as you promise to send it back to us so we can use it on our own Goldman Sach’s looters ourselves! After all, a global revolt is brewing, once the Greeks truly kick it off, why not make it a MASS HANGING PARTY, WORLD-WIDE! Televise it on Pay Per View, and re-monetize the looted nations with some of the dosh from that???
Sound far fetched? I bet a lot of Russian oligarchs would LOVE to pay to see some fat cat Yerp’ean’s and Mer’kans dangled on ROPE :)
YES!! Iceland IS doing it right!
To quote Nelson from the Simpsons “Ha ha!”
LOL what a show!!
More of the related articles :
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/05/06/former-kaupthing-bank-boss-hreidar-mar-sigurdsson-arrested-in-iceland/
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/05/08/chairman-of-kaupthing-board-keeping-silent/
Earlier comment filled posts on this subject :
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/05/06/former-kaupthing-bank-boss-hreidar-mar-sigurdsson-arrested-in-iceland/
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/05/08/chairman-of-kaupthing-board-keeping-silent/