Icelandic fraud investigation is corrupt. Part 2

The second case is about the Parliament Investigative Committee (from now on PIC).

The committee is doing independent research along side the special prosecutor to figure out what really was going here in Iceland. The PIC consists of three members who can hire in people and corporations to assist them. One of best asset of the PIC is Sigríður Benediktsdóttir an Icelandic woman and a Yale economics lecturer. She did an interview witht he Yale Daily News in march.

This quote is what all the fuzz is about. “I am disheartened by this failure; I feel it is a result of extreme greed on the part of many and reckless complacency by the institutions that were in charge of regulating the industry and in charge of ensuring financial stability in the country. Iceland will end up with a huge foreign debt as a result, which may not be the worst of it, since our reputation is completely tattered.”

The story is that Jónas Fr. Jónsson former head of the Financial Supervisory Authority in Iceland, who was fired when Björgvin G. Sigurdsson resigned as minister of commerce earlier this year, made a complaint to Páll Hreinsson the chairman of the PIC about those remarks. He claimed that she was disqualified because of this remark. The parliament have received reports that there is a serious breach of confidence within the PIC.

The strange thing is that when Eyjan.is website reported this in march this was not considdered as significant. It was not until the complaint was made that the chairman reacted by asking Sigríður to resign from the PIC. She refused.

According to Jón Danielsson an Icelander and an economist lecturer at the London School of Economics who has served an adviser to Sigríður Benediktsdóttir on various issues claims that the majority of the PIC, that is both other members of PIC, Páll Hreinsson and Tryggvi Gunnarsson had pressed her hard to resign. Páll Hreinsson the chairman of PIC claims otherwise in the media yesterday.

It is incredible to witness this sort of idiotic behaviour. The comment she made are known to everyone. This is common knowledge why things happened this way. Why are they pushing her to resign? She is very smart, knowledgeable, well connected with experts abroad.

The reason is that people are trying to technically stop or slow down any investigations. It sounds like a conspiracy theory the claim that “they are pulling strings”, or that “forces are behind the cover up”, but when this coincides with the last entry about Eva Joly wanting to resign and wash her hands of this mess, and the simple fact that nothing is being done to bring those responsible to justice.

Mediocre efforts are simply not enough. The government needs to take responsibility and act fast and at least give the people who are paying for the whole mess the satisfaction of results. Somebody must be held responsible. What stands in the way is the close knit society of politicians, family and business partners. Not to mention corruption, bribery and other healthy forms of destruction.