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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot to read. Can someone explain the details of actual crimes for which they were convicted? The whole "finance crimes" always seem a little fuzzy. If you run up $70 billion in debt, for example, and need a bailout, is that a crime?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-29/puerto-ric...

It almost seems like a game.

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My uncle is one of the jailed, mentioned in the article. One of Iceland’s most respected lawyers and teacher at the University of Iceland has gone on paper, and on radio, and on TV, saying that the Al Thani trials did not make any sense, for more than one reason. The most obvious mistake was that by the time the case went from local courtrooms to the federal level the prosecution had completely switched the focus of the case, going so far as to turn prosecuted into witnesses. (The courts also gave out 99% green light on all wire taps requested from the prosecutors to prepare the case, and let them put my uncle and others in multi-day isolation years after the events themselves... didn’t really get the reason for that)

The court ruling is very interesting. The foundation of the conviction is market manipulation, which, at least in Iceland, is highly interpretive by judges. It seems obvious when you read the ruling and the criticism that judges were ruling in favour of public opinion. That’s my opinion and reading of it, the public opinion is still very much against bankers, so ymmv when asking other people in Iceland.

The article also fails to mention how Kaupthing went bankrupt. Understandably as the article doesn’t go into any detail on anything at all really. But it involves credit lines shutting down completely following a raid by the British on UK offices of Kaupthing using terrorist law to seize files and shut down the bank’s UK presence.

You could maybe google translate this for better info: http://www.pressan.is/pressupennar/Lesa_Brynjar/al-thanimali...

If it's any consolation, using anti-terror laws against banks feels slightly, though just slightly, less intrusive and overblown than using the same laws against bin crimes. ("Dustbin Stasi" is the word).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-counc...

It's fairly common in the US for people under threat of prosecution to turn into states witnesses to get a reduced sentence - "rat out your manager/boss who ordered the crimes and we'll let you off easy."

Is this uncommon in Iceland? It seems fairly straightforward and useful in cases like organized crime syndicates (and banking cartels) where if everyone denies wrongdoing they all get found not guilty.

I would take this reply with a huge grain of salt, the lawyer in the article is a personal friend/business partner and a defendant of one of the persons accused of the same crimes.

It’s one big grain of salt in Iceland since everything and everyone is somehow related.

Market manipulation

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iceland-bankers-idUSKBN0LG...

No, they went to jail for fraud.

For example, these bankers [1] approved a loan to a shell company owned by the bank's insiders for the purpose of buying the banks shares. None of the large banks in the U.S. did anything like that. The closest we've had was the LIBOR scandal, where prosecution is certainly happening.

[1] http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iceland-crisis-idUKBRE8BR0E...

How did they manipulate the market?

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