Icelandic businessman says scapegoat in landmark bank case
By Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir
REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Icelandic businessman Olafur Olafsson, sentenced last week for market manipulation for his role in the collapsed Kaupthing Bank, accused his country's politicians of using the banking sector as a scapegoat for their own mistakes.
Olafsson, Kaupthing's second-largest shareholder when it collapsed in 2008 at the beginning of the financial crisis, was last week sentenced in absentia to four and half years in the heaviest verdict for financial fraud in Iceland's history.
Three other Kaupthing executives were sentenced to between four and five and a half years after the Supreme Court upheld previous convictions.
"I believe that the judges first decided what the outcome should be and then afterwards wrote the verdict," Olafsson told Reuters in a telephone interview at the weekend.
"Iceland is a very small country... The walls between politicians and officials are very thin.
"The politicians decided to put all focus on the banking sector, and not to study what went wrong with the economy, which is under their responsibility."
Olafsson, who currently lives in Switzerland and works as the chairman of Samskip B.V., a Dutch logistics company, said he would return to Iceland once he was called to serve his time.
This could happen in the next few weeks, after which Olafsson may have anywhere from one to four months to show up, according to past practice.
"It is never good to put your head down into the sand like an ostrich. You have to face all the challenges life throws you," he said.
He also said he would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights but did not hold out much hope that his case would be accepted.
Kaupthing, along with the two other major banks in the country, Glitnir and Landsbanki, collapsed under heavy debts after the crisis, taking Iceland's small economy into a severe recession. Former chief executives of Glitnir and Landsbanki have also been convicted on charges ranging from fraud and market manipulation.
Special prosecutor Olafur Hauksson last week commented that the latest ruling will "send a strong message" to other countries slow to pursue similar cases against fraudulent bankers.
Many bankers were seen as symbols of Iceland's budding economic prowess before the crisis, when the sector's assets grew to 10 times the country's GDP.
(Writing by Jussi Rosendahl; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
