Icelandic Prime Minister Resigns After Panama Data Leak (bloomberg.com)

Omar Valdimarsson, reporting for Bloomberg: The Panama secrecy leak claimed its first scalp after Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned following revelations about his personal finances. The decision was announced in parliament after the legislature had been the focus of street protests that attracted thousands of Icelanders angered by the alleged tax evasion of their leader. Gunnlaugsson, who will step down a year before his term was due to end, gave in to mounting pressure from the opposition and even from corners of his own party. The Panama documents leak, printed in newspapers around the world, showed that the 41-year-old premier and his wife had investments placed in the British Virgin Islands, which included debt in Iceland's three failed banks. An article on The Guardian sheds more light on this: The leaked documents from the Mossack Fonseca law firm show Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, bought a British Virgin Islands-based offshore company, Wintris Inc, in December 2007 to invest her share of the proceeds of the sale of her father's business, Iceland's only Toyota importer. Gunnlaugsson sold his 50% stake to his wife for a symbolic $1 at the end of 2009, eight months after he was elected to parliament as an MP for the centre-right Progressive party. He failed, however, to declare an interest in the company either then or when he became prime minister in 2013. His office has said his shareholding was an error due simply to the couple having a joint bank account and that it had "always been clear to both of them that the prime minister's wife owned the assets." The transfer of ownership was made as soon as this was pointed out, a spokesman said. The prime minister denies he was required to declare an interest.

Comments

wow, they have a real accountable democracy

[liquid_schwartz]

Kinda cold for me and I'm not a huge pickled fish eater but otherwise they always sound great.

Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy

[MightyMartian]

Exactly. I can't think of any jurisdiction, at least in the West, where selling your holdings to your spouse for a dollar somehow means the conflict of interest goes away. This is the kind of idiotic scam someone about to go bankrupt would try, and with the same result. Handing it over to your spouse doesn't make the conflict go away.

Pirate Party

[doconnor]

Of interest to Slashdotters is that the Pirate Party of Iceland currently has a generous lead in the polls if an early election is called.

Give Islanders credit

[Lucas123]

Iceland's citizenry turned out by the thousands to protest their PM's refusal to resign after the Panama Papers revealed his corruption. The Kremlin on the other hand has already called the Panama Papers a CIA plot, (big surprise there). Hopefully, if the Panama Papers do reveal Putin used a shell to hide his money, Russia's citizens will not stand for it and force his hand. Let's hope other nation's citizens follow suit, including here in the U.S.

Re:Nordic honesty.

[DarthVain]

Well 22k citizens of a possible total of 330k showed up to protest... 6.6% of their entire population.

That would be the equivalent of about 22 Million people showing up outside the Whitehouse (or 2.3 Million in Ottawa) ... I'm pretty sure there would be no "And what you're gonna do about it, plebs?". More likely there were be a lot of awkward silence and a hasty departure.

I mean a lot of people made a big deal about the "million man march"... now do that 22 times bigger. Regardless of police or military, that would make a corrupt politician pretty damn nervous....

What is even crazier about the Iceland numbers is that 330k population includes things like babies, and the very elderly etc... Meaning that an even higher percentage of the able population showed up!