Iceland banks' fraud trails 'lead to UK'

Special prosector Olafur Hauksson meets with Serious Fraud Office to discuss cases regarding Nordic institutions

• Simon Bowers
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 September 2009 19.03 BST
• Article history

Leading Icelandic prosecutors met members of the Serious Fraud Office in London today , underlining the strong British dimension in mounting evidence of widespread and substantial frauds exposed in the Nordic nation's dramatic banking meltdown 11 months ago.

Special prosecutor Olafur Hauksson, who is leading a specialist unit set up to investigate financial crimes emerging from last October's banking collapse, said he was unable to talk about individual cases, but "a lot of roads lead to the UK".

Hauksson, being assisted by Eva Joly, a veteran French fraud prosecutor, met with the SFO director, Richard Alderman, who is expected to send a return fact-finding delegation to Reykjavik shortly.

Hauksson said he already had 35 cases under investigation and expected the total to rapidly grow to between 60 and 70. Areas of inquiry include loan fraud, market manipulation, document fraud, embezzlement and bank fraud.

Critics of the Icelandic banking system point to an extraordinary boom over the last decade, which saw balance sheet assets at three banks – Glitnir, Landsbanki and Kaupthing – balloon to nine times Iceland's GDP. Also of concern to banking experts has been the large loan exposure of these banks to individuals, some of whom held an interest in the ownership of the banks. A mix of light loan collateral and a complex web of corporate cross-holdings made discovering true asset values in many cases near impossible.

Hauksson confirmed his criminal investigators were focusing on all these issues. Joly said: "It is just not an excuse to say everyone was hiding debt in tax havens or falsely inflating assets."

An SFO spokesman said: "Mr Alderman is ... keen to see how the SFO and the Icelandic authorities can work together efficiently, sharing information ... Further meetings and information exchange are to be arranged, including a visit by SFO investigative and intelligence specialists to Reykjavik."