16/04/24 17:33:03.38 YgHqQiEd0.net
Gunnlaugsson’s Offshore Saga
Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson rose to power on a wave of anti-bank anger in the aftermath
of the Icelandic financial crisis, which saw the country’s three major banks fail spectacularly
over a few days in October 2008 following years of speculation and self-dealing. A journalist and
radio-TV personality - he finished third in a sexiest man in Iceland contest in 2004 - an outspoken
Gunnlaugsson led a group called InDefence after the crash that campaigned for Iceland to reject bailing
out international creditors on billions of dollars in deposits in the banks. In two national referenda ,
voters sided with InDefence, and the successful campaign helped bring Gunnlaugsson and his party to power.
In January 2009 the Progressive Party elected Gunnlaugsson, a nationalist who once went on an Icelandic-only
diet, its chairman to put a fresh young face on a party with roots in Iceland’s agrarian past. At age 38,
he would become the youngest prime minister in the country’s history in 2013, promising to play hardball
with foreign creditors, offer debt relief to struggling homeowners and end austerity programs.
As prime minister, Gunnlaugsson’s government reached an agreement with creditors in 2015 that his old group
InDefence criticized as too generous.
The Mossack Fonseca documents show Gunnlaugsson’s family - unbeknownst to Icelanders - had a big personal stake
in the outcome for bank creditors.
In December 2007, Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir, purchased Wintris Inc. from Mossack Fonseca
through the Luxembourg branch of Landsbanki, one of Iceland’s three big banks. The couple used the shell company to
invest millions of dollars in inherited money, according to a document signed in 2015 by the prime minister’s wife,
the daughter of a wealthy Icelandic Toyota dealer, after she was asked by Mossack Fonseca where she had gotten the money.
“The Icelandic banks formed branches, for example, in Luxembourg and the UK, and what they did there was create offshore
companies for their clients to park all sorts of assets,” said Rob Jonatansson, a Reykjavik attorney who led the resolution
of a smaller bank that also collapsed, not commenting on Wintris specifically. “The offshore companies afforded the opportunity
for tax evasion, which probably some took.”
The Mossack Fonseca files don’t disclose where Wintris invested its money, but court records show that Wintris had
significant investments in the bonds of each of the three major Icelandic banks. Those records list the company as a creditor with
millions of dollars in claims in the banks’ bankruptcies.
一部抜粋(´・ω・｀)ゝ
ＴＯＹＯＴＡ ぱなまぶんしょよりｗアイスランド首相が辞任した例のくだりの一部抜粋です。