Government reinforces the office of Special Prosecutor

The governing coalition of the Social Democratic Alliance and Left-Green Movement intends to submit a bill to the Althingi greatly extending the authorisation of the Special Prosecutor to gather and demand information and data for the investigation of individual issues linked to the country’s economic collapse. Disclosure and notification obligations will be established and bank secrecy removed.

Powers increased and made more precise

The bill would make the authorisations provided to Prosecutor’s Office to request information and data more precise and unequivocal. The changes are intended to strengthen the Prosecutor’s Office, enabling it to better investigate, provide explanations of and, as the case may be, lay charges in cases covered by Act No. 135/2008, on the Office of Special Prosecutor. The bill would entitle the Special Prosecutor to demand information from the Financial Supervisory Authority (FME), the Icelandic Competition Authority, the Directorate of Tax Investigations in Iceland and other supervisory and regulatory institutions, from the banks’ Resolution Committees and other parties involved in debt moratoria, composition with creditors or insolvency proceedings of financial undertakings.

Greater disclosure and notification obligations to the Special Prosecutor’s Office

In addition, it would make it mandatory for parties to comply with requests from the Office to provide information and data, even if they are subject to obligations of confidentiality concerning the activities of financial undertakings. It would also confirm the obligation incumbent upon employees of financial undertakings’ Resolution Committees, Appointees during debt moratoria, supervisors of composition or liquidators to submit notifications of events, which are considered to conceivably give rise to grounded suspicions of punishable actions, to the Special Prosecutor’s Office.

Bank secrecy definitively eliminated

This, in fact, means that bank secrecy restrictions, for instance, are fully abolished, while at the same time enabling the Special Prosecutor to demand information on cases from the institutions concerned without having to produce prior conclusive evidence of a punishable offence, as provided for in previous legislation. By so doing, the bill concerned can be regarded as contributing to the thorough investigation and clearing up of matters connected to the economic collapse more rapidly, greatly simplifying the work of the Special Prosecutor while at the same time encouraging a more rapid economic recovery in Iceland.