
Icelandic Prime Minister Resigns After Panama Data Leak - antr
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/icelandic-prime-minister-resigns-after-panama-data-leak-ruv
======
qznc
If they really have a reelection it is quite likely that the Pirate Party will
win. That would be awesome!

[https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/717337076807639040](https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/717337076807639040)

~~~
levemi
It bothers me that the options for office are untrustworthy career politicians
who lie and corrupt their position or naive single issue ideologues who
understand too little and expect too much. I kind of wish politics was boring.
Just vote for the boring candidates who know how to do their job and are happy
with an average salary. Bureaucrats, but competent ones.

~~~
prawn
I wonder how realistic AI politicians are?

Which set of algorithms do you want to vote for?

~~~
Rodeoclash
Just make a pull request with the law you want to implement or amend

~~~
unexistance
another way to 'use' github I guess :D or plain git?

------
Hansi
As an Icelandic person living abroad I can only say fuck this fucking shit:
"Prime Minister has not resigned - sends press release to international media"
[http://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2016/...](http://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2016/04/05/prime_minister_has_not_resigned_sends_press_release/)

~~~
powertower
I've tried to locate the details of his crimes, but can't seem to. There is
just some minor things listed from years ago being mentioned.

Do you know what exactly he has he done (to have to resign in shame)?

It's just odd that there are no details within the articles, nor from the
people that are trying to get him to resign.

~~~
lincolnbryant
[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-03/unprecedented-
leak-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-03/unprecedented-leak-exposes-
criminal-financial-dealings-some-worlds-wealthiest-people)

~~~
powertower
That was my point... He had ownership in a company that lost money and net
worth (if I'm reading that correctly).

I can't find the illegal or the immoral part.

~~~
21echoes
the main one: right before new disclosure, regulation, and taxation laws came
into effect, he sold 50% ownership stake in his holdings of the shell corp to
his wife for $1, so that he would not be subject to the new laws.

in general: one does not have to literally break the law to be asked to resign
by your citizens. that is not, and should not be, the standards to which we
hold our leaders.

------
adultSwim
Leaks take their first scalp.

Curious to see if/when they go after more sensitive/powerful Western
interests. Seems like so far the articles have gone after fairly easy targets.

~~~
losteric
> Seems like so far the articles have gone after fairly easy targets.

They're being careful. There are legitimate reasons for running these shell
corps and (accidental) libel will throw all their accusations in to question.

> When asked about the lack of Americans in the original release, the German
> newspaper’s editor responded mysteriously: "Just wait for what is coming
> next."

I am patiently waiting with a bucket of popcorn.

~~~
pdabbadabba
> When asked about the lack of Americans in the original release, the German
> newspaper’s editor responded mysteriously: "Just wait for what is coming
> next."

We may see something eventually. But it has also been pointed out that U.S.
laws give wealthy individuals fewer reasons to form companies in Panama. It is
possible to form entities with secret owners under U.S. law, with a little
effort. So the primary reason for Americans to go offshore may be tax-related,
for which Panama would not normally be the jurisdiction of choice.

See: [http://fusion.net/story/287671/americans-panama-papers-
trove...](http://fusion.net/story/287671/americans-panama-papers-trove/)

~~~
rconti
There's a whole series of NPR Planet Money podcasts about setting up offshore
(and onshore!) shell companies.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episode-390-we-
set-up-an-offshore-company-in-a-tax-haven)

~~~
joezydeco
Just finished these as well. PM couldn't have lucked out more with the timing
on this one.

~~~
freshyill
I don't think it was luck. I was just listening to All Things Considered and
apparently there was considerable collaboration among journalists. The Planet
Money podcasts were rebroadcasts from a few years ago. I bet they knew the
story would be dropping soon, and they decided to give their listeners a
primer.

[http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473139196/panama-papers-
leak-i...](http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473139196/panama-papers-leak-is-the-
result-of-unprecedented-media-collaboration)

~~~
joezydeco
Wow. Good point.

------
shinglesbell
Meanwhile in South Africa the current president is corrupt as can be and
refuses to resign despite calls from all corners of society to do so...
[http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/opposition-parties-
un...](http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/opposition-parties-unite-
against-zuma-in-parliament-20160405)

------
fhaifhruh
In the meantime, the Chinese government censors every piece of news about
Panama Papers and __unelected __officials keep corrupting, manipulating and
abusing human rights.

~~~
ta_04052016_1
Their anti-graft campaign is nothing more than a political purge. When it
comes to real tax emission and corruption, they honestly can't care less.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge)

------
markwaldron
I wonder if the law will be as harsh on him as it was on the bankers they
jailed.

~~~
halviti
Technically he hasn't been publicly accused of doing anything illegal.

Someone would have to make the case that his holdings in this offshore company
actually did influence the decisions made regarding the banks during the
crisis, and nobody is doing that just yet.

~~~
mortehu
He is accused of not disclosing his 50% stake in Wintris when he is elected to
parliament in April 2009, in violation of a law requiring all members of
parliament to report companies of which they own more than 25%.

(I can't find the law in question.)

~~~
halviti
Sort of. He signed his 50% share over to his wife the day before that law went
into effect, so 'technically' he didn't violate it.

Luckily the public doesn't care much for these sort of technicalities as
everyone can see the obvious conflict of interest that was trying to be
hidden.

~~~
makomk
I'm not sure he even violated the spirit of that law. The offshore company in
question was set up by his independently wealthy wife in order to invest her
family fortune, and if the authors of that law didn't think politicians'
partners' investments needed disclosing, well...

------
Htsthbjig
The problem is when people in power seizes people's banks account like it was
done in Iceland because "the country needs sacrifices" and they themselves
don't do the sacrifice.

Before banning possession of gold, FDR and all his friends and family actually
sold their gold:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)

When taxes were 95% in UK or US(during and after the big war) it was better
for the big guys that paid very little at the end.

In times of emergency measures, just having info means you are not affected by
that. But everybody else is.

------
nickbauman
This when the US is the favorite tax haven still.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/the-
world-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/the-world-s-
favorite-new-tax-haven-is-the-united-states)

~~~
spriggan3
> This when the US is the favorite tax haven still.

It doesn't matter for US individuals or corporations, they need off shore
accounts if they want to evade taxes.

------
Pyxl101
Did he break the law or do something unethical? What did he do?

~~~
halviti
He held a company with his wife that owned stock in the collapsed banks
(making him a creditor to the banks). He then essentialy gave his wife his
share of the company so he could hide this from the public and not report it,
and was then put in a position of power where this holding becomes a conflict
of interest because he is in a position to determine how much these creditors
(he and his wife) would get paid for their stock.

~~~
akhatri_aus
Did he or his wife benefit from this? I thought it would suck to be a creditor
to a collapsed bank?

~~~
neffy
It's complicated.

The precise chain of events is:

1) 2006 Father of wife sells Toyota dealership at a very favourable price to a
consortium of business men who use a bank loan to pay for it.

2) Wife inherits/is given money by father.

3) Wife uses some of the money to invest in Icelandic Banks using an offshore
company Wintris. Note, Icelandic Banks are desperately raising capital during
this period ... in order to allow them to make more loans. At the same time,
Banks are also borrowing heavily from abroad, and re-lending that money to a
small circle of businessmen (see 1).

4) Banks go under because during 2008 they are unable to rollover the loans
that they have borrowed on the international credit market (see 3), and also
are starting to experience massive defaults on the loans they have made to a
small circle of Icelandic businessmen (see 1 & 3).

5) Wintris is listed as one of many creditors to the Icelandic Banks, and and
consequently stands to benefit (or not) from the resolution talks that are
ongoing to this day.

------
trhway
weak Vikings - crying quit the moment somebody noticed a probably undeclared
krona of theirs. Real men with nerves of steel - like Putin - never quit even
when billions dollars of stolen money surface in the clear!

------
simplegeek
Can any lawyer kindly shed some light on why tax evasion by politicians is so
wrong that they should step down? Just trying to understand.

~~~
cjbprime
As I understand it, it's only especially wrong in Iceland, where the ruling
party is (a) running on a platform of hostility towards large banks; (b)
currently negotiating with those banks to decide how much public money they
should get; and (c) we now find that the primary negotiator is _invested in
the banks he 's negotiating against_ (through bonds held offshore), which he
is supposed to be philosophically opposed to the success of on some basic
level.

Or something like that.

~~~
glup
I agree with the above, but I think there's also a more general
Scandinavian/Swiss/German ethic that strongly values playing by the rules.
Many citizens in these countries have a very different view of government than
most do in the US _: if collective adherence to rules results in better
collective outcomes, and you if you value collective outcomes (perhaps because
they are relatively culturally, ethnically, and socioeconomically homogenous
populations), then regulation isn 't a thing to find a way around for personal
benefit.

I think the above sentiment gets further reified as it becomes pare of the
national identity: corruption scandals are for tropical dictators, not well-
off postindustrial democracies.

_this varies by region in the US, obviously. I suspect that the frequency of
Pittsburgh lefts
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left))
is a pretty decent proxy for valuing system-optimal outcomes

~~~
cfallin
It's fascinating to me that you mention Pittsburgh lefts as a sign of altruism
/ global-outcome-optimization. I currently live in Pittsburgh and... let's
just say that I would not hold the average driver up as a model of
selflessness. I think it's more that we've reached a local equilibrium: new
drivers learn quickly to wait when a light turns green, as a matter of
avoiding accidents, and also to take advantage of that pause when turning
left, as a matter of not angering everyone behind them. It's difficult to
change the equilibrium as long as you interact with others following the
current system.

(It's entirely possible that one could view this as emergent-behavior-
converging-on-altruism without anyone consciously being altruistic. I'm just
saying that anecdotally, it doesn't seem to derive directly from conscious
altruistic values.)

~~~
macintux
I witnessed a car in downtown Indianapolis pull that stunt. Of course, the
driver accelerated straight into a pedestrian, who was less than enthused.

------
peter303
In Iceland they bailed out Main Street, not Wall Street. They let their bad
banks collapse, not save them. That caused severe sort term pain to bank
customers. They also forced all mortgages to be rewritten to cancel any
underwater portion. That is easier do when you three banks instead of 8000 and
not the securitization of mortgages.

~~~
toyg
Downvoted, because this is totally irrelevant to the topic at hand. Shall we
also talk about volcanoes and Icelandic flora?

------
niccaluim
Iceland doesn't mess around, man. He's lucky they aren't still resolving
disputes via blood feud. :)

~~~
erispoe
Blood feuds were never the preferred method. The Sagas go on and on about
people who were good lawyers and on how important it was to know the law
(while being able to chop a head off with a single swing of your axe).
Iceland's parliament is the oldest in the world in continuous operation.

~~~
_acme
Iceland's parliament, the Althing, has not been in continuous operation since
its founding; it was discontinued in 1799 for 45 years. It was restored in
1844.

------
justsaysmthng
I wonder if there will be similar political consequences in other countries.

Somehow I feel like the really big fish will just shrug it off by flexing its
political muscle a little and get out clean.

They will point their fingers at a plot by CIA to destabilize their country
and scream that the west is a lot more corrupt than _insert name here_.

~~~
r3bl
Well joke's on them then because CIA is in Panama Papers too! The CIA findings
were published just two hours ago:
[https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/spies-and-shadowy-
alli...](https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/spies-and-shadowy-allies/)

To be honest, I don't see any other country doing anything remotely similar to
Iceland. After all, Iceland is small, western, and _very progressive_ country.
20 thousand people in the protest yesterday represents ~10% of registered
voters, which is a _huge_ percentage of people that came to protest.

------
wmil
For an interesting contrast, in Canada the CBC (state broadcaster) the names
of over 350 Canadians implicated but has decided not to release any of the
names. They've turned the list over to the tax agency, but that's it.

------
orn
He thought he could hold on, with all the protests and the mass of people
coming out, didn't work out that way.

------
swang
He still remains head of his party, and his fellow party member took over for
him. Seems fishy.

~~~
halviti
His party and also their coalition party are trying to keep the parliament
together because if it gets dissolved then it's likely the pirate party will
win in an election, so they're trying to avoid that.

~~~
r3bl
Not really.

First of all, if the parliament gets dissolved, the parties have really short
time to actually prepare a campaign, which means that bigger parties will
_probably_ be more in a bit of an advantage, because they have a lot of
experience. Pirate Party is not really big in Iceland neither, but according
to the polls, it currently does have huge support (~40%).

Second of all, prime minister _did_ try to dissolve the parliament by asking
the president to do so before he resigned, but president rejected this
proposal. This means that the parliament will probably be functional until the
elections (set for autumn), just with a different Prime Minister. This gives
the Pirate Party much more time to actually prepare for the elections, and, in
my opinion, gives them enough time to actually crush the competition.

This is, by far, the best possible outcome for the Pirate Party.

------
Hello71
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name#Cultural_ramifi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name#Cultural_ramifications_.E2.80.93_how_to_address_people)

------
Overtonwindow
Perhaps not politically correct, but I absolutely love it when politicians
loudly declare they will NOT resign, only to resign the follow day or two.

~~~
a3n
I'm always curious who plays the role, or the messenger for that role, who
_tells_ someone in this kind of situation that "no, you actually _will_
resign. Today."

~~~
JonnieCache
Episode one of the BBC series "the thick of it" begins with exactly this
situation. Perhaps the best comedy programme of the last ten years.

~~~
genericpseudo
Best _programme_ of the last ten years, I reckon. About the most honest, too.

~~~
samwilliams
I hope that it is not the most honest, but I do agree that it is the best.

If you like The Thick Of It, you may also like the film 'In The Loop' and
'Veep' (both also 'created' by Armando Iannucci) as well as the Australian
'The Hollowmen'. 'Utopia', the sort-of follow on to The Hollowmen (which is
excellent), is quite good too. There is also the 'Armando Iannucci show',
which is very good, but also very different.

There is also supposed to be the Afghan version of the 'Thick Of It' too,
although I have not found a source for that with translation.

~~~
arethuza
"Afghan version of the 'Thick Of It'"

It is mentioned in the excellent "Bitter Lake" by Adam Curtis.

~~~
samwilliams
Indeed it is! An exceptional film maker.

------
pink_dinner
All of these leaks show me that illegally hacking data and releasing private
data has no consequences as long as the ends justify the means

~~~
ionised
It shouldn't carry any consuquences if the leak is determined to be in the
public interest.

That's the whole idea behind whistleblowing, and whistleblower protection.

------
drzaiusapelord
Meh, its a country of 330,000 people with some pretty oddball politics as its
norm. This PM is 41 years old and has only been in government 7 years. Its not
like he represents the old guard, the banking industry, CEOs, the wealthy, or
somesuch. He's kinda a nobody, even by Icelandic standards. He didn't have the
political capital to cushion his fall so he took the easy way out.

I'll be impressed when there's some reform or change in a powerful country or
against a powerful and corrupt leader like Russia's Putin, who is clearly
fleecing the Russian people to enrich himself and his friends. So far the only
good news of note is that the US and the IRS will be cracking down harder on
these characters now that they have all this ammo against them.

Sadly, this will get a lot of people thinking "our side won" when this is
pretty much the lowest prize we could have. Where's the real reform? Where's
the big leaders being taken down? Iceland is pretty much a suburban Danish
city on an island. Its not a world power. My city's dog catcher got more votes
than this guy. Lets demand more than trivial wins.

That said, bravo to the Icelandic people. Their example of a more direct form
of democracy is pretty inspiring.

~~~
hugi
Meh? This affects those of us that live in this country quite a lot. What is
it that you find so odd or different about our politics from the rest of the
world?

~~~
gr3yh47
not agreeing with the comment you replied to, but what i find different
between us and Iceland is:

Their people mobilized aggressively against corruption twice now.

Our people have not, not for the banks, not for the NSA leaks, and we probably
will not for this

~~~
adventured
Occupy Wall Street in fact drew the attention of millions of Americans. It
also had practical results by shining the spotlight on the US banking system,
as did the broad public anger at Wall Street.

The largest US banks have been semi-neutered, nearly nationalized by the Fed
when it comes to control, and are heavily tamped down when it comes to risk.
The result of all of that, is that America's banks are now arguably the
strongest - and among the safest - in the world (compare Wells Fargo and JP
Morgan right now to Europe's banks for example, or see: Deutsche Bank and
Credit Suisse).

~~~
tremon
_America 's banks are now arguably the strongest - and among the safest - in
the world_

So, nothing changed?

