Bjarni Benediktsson, leader of Iceland’s Independence Party has protested claims he was involved in a property speculation racket in Macau.
The company whose board Benediktsson used to chair, had shares in another company which is linked to the Macau situation and is now under investigation by Iceland’s Special Prosecutor into the economic collapse. The case is potentially one of the largest the Special Prosecutor has been involved in to date.
The DV newspaper broke the story of Benediktsson’s ties to the Macau property speculation and has covered the same issue before; but that time in connection to the Milestone holdings company, owned by Karl and Steingrimur Wernersson.
The project focused on the purchase of 68 luxury apartments in a tall tower in the self-governing Chinese city of Macau. The Icelandic insurance company, Sjova also took part in the project, which ended up overburdening it. The state had to inject ISK 12 billion into Sjova to save it from bankruptcy. Glitnir and Islandsbanki put ISK 4 billion into the project.
Bjarni Benediktsson is connected to the fiasco due to having been chairman of the board at BNT, which owns the oil company N1. Benediktsson was in his role at BNT when the company Vafningur ehf was set up with BNT holding a large stake through another third company.
The Macau project was ascribed to Vafningur in 2008 as collateral for refinancing of company debts.
Benediktsson responded to the allegations saying they are an attempt to discredit him and that he knew nothing of the project being used as Vafningur collateral until long after the event.
Only don’t tell me that you’re innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.
The Godfather, 1972.
even worse, when a chairman of a board does “not know” about mayor issues and projects, the company is involved in. And he applied for presidentship last year and is leading the opposition now?
Goða nót Ísland.
Name just one Icelander that has had guts or integrity to admit any wrongdoing? Shameful!
Well, Well. No big suprise that yet another member of the Independance Party is basically a criminal. These people are such openly proud peices of scum it beggars belief! They own evrything between them and their criminal friends. They should change their name to the Icelandic Communist Party I think!
This my friends is known as a ” smear “.
Do you know what that is ?
It is always nice to see DV’s photograpeher have come up with story to go with they pictures — even if it is clearly a company twice removed situation.
Under this kind of analyses then we can accuse the DV owners of being involved in scandals too.
I am still waiting for the good peoples at wikileaks to be publishing those well known EU grant corruptions of Social Democrats politicians.
“This my friends is known as a ” smear “. Do you know what that is ?”
Fisy – You are truly deluded! What colour is the sky in your world? Vanilla?
Fisy is an IP devotee and a ‘fan’ of the brilliant, profitable, well run Kaputhing Bank.
Hey guys less of the ad hominems.
I am sure that being experts you are about this one you have already read this articel :
http://mbl.is/mm/vidskipti/frettir/2009/12/10/kvedst_ekki_hafa_braskad_neitt/
@Ðeter – London
“Fisy is an IP devotee and a ‘fan’ of the brilliant, profitable, well run Kaputhing Bank”
Or otherwise known as people who are on kleppur Day release
Ownership of the Macau tower is Drakensberg Investments Limited British Virgin islands 100%
that company is owned by SJ Properties MacauOneCentral Holdco ehf 100%
that company is owned by Vafningur ehf 100%
Fisy – so why doesn’t he sue?
>I am sure that being experts you are about this one you have already read this articel :
Yep, as well as Google can handle (which pretty much means that I’m not wiser than I was before I read the IceNews article :) ). I didn’t notice the use of the expression “collpase” once, so Alda must be wrong and MBL must still be a beacon of purity. Wait, silly me, she didn’t say that it ever was :) .
And nice to see that Mike can post one-liners. Not, I should say, that I don’t appreciate his in-depth posts.
Dec 10, 2009, Fisy said:
“Hey guys less of the ad hominems.”
Dec 10, 2009, Fisy said:
“But if it is then congratulation Gus on getting self a nice new girl friend that does give meds on time and type for you.”
Yet *another* example of the **** you come out with.
Peter – London you do not seem to know difference between ad hominem and humour.
But none of postings in this thread does change situation with this smear story in DV.
Facts show Bjarni Ben’s ” ties to the Macau property speculation ” are tenuous. So tenuous in fact as only to be of interest to tabloid like DV.
My point Brumley is that before you actually post comment about something you should read into actual facts of case. And debate on those facts.
It is clear that you are not going to get those from IceNews post alone. If you are to comment it seem to be important to know just what actually the facts of this case are.
Silly ad hominem postings like first 7 in this thread ( not including mine of course ) have nothing to do with the actual allegations made by DV and press at all.
Mike (UK Nordic analyst) said:
>Fisy – so why doesn’t he sue?
At last an intelligent comment in this thread.
Unlike UK where libel laws are easier I doubt that what is said in the DV article is grounds for libel under Icelandic laws of reputation.
It does state some facts. Instead it is the headlines and writeup of news wire like ones here at IceNews that are based on it where problem arrises.
It is like I would suppose in UK either The Sun article or Daily Mail article. Both known for writing about a subject in such way that it is not libelous but it is misleading and smearing.
Take for example how Joanna Lumley and the Gurkha Justice Group was smeared in the sun recently. It was not that they print huge untruths just that through the writing they do put focus on the wrong things.
There was this great English film of 1980s called ” How to get ahead in advetising ” that you may remember, that did cover this exact issue of tabloid writing in the speech on the train ” The distortion of truth by association “, read here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097531/quotes
It is the “Businessman on Train ” part.
>My point Brumley is that before you actually post comment about something you should read into actual facts of case. And debate on those facts.
Fine, but I don’t think MBL has a English page. Anyway, my point was that MBL isn’t really somewhere you’d ever have gone to to get the truth on the leader of IP.