Panama Papers: How Iceland's leader became the leaks' first casualty

Opposition leaders and thousands of protesters called for the country's prime minister to step down amid a dispute over his offshore financial affairs. On Tuesday, he complied.

|
Brynjar Gunnarsson/AP
Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson speaks during a parliamentary session in Reykjavik on Monday.

Anyone passing the parliament building here Monday afternoon was greeted by young boys banging pots with wooden spoons, adults holding up signs and bananas, and the shouts of tens of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Iceland's prime minister.

Families, young people, retirees, and even pets turned out for the demonstration, which coincided with parliament's first session since Easter. They demanded Prime Minster Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson step down and called for new elections because of leaked documents that opposition lawmakers say show a conflict of interest with his job. On Tuesday, Mr. Gunnlaugsson announced his resignation.

News reports about the so-called "Panama Papers," a massive data leak revealing offshore tax havens for celebrities and politicians across the globe, have alleged that Mr. Gunnlaugsson and his wife set up a offshore company in the British Virgin Islands.

The reports allege that Gunnlaugsson didn’t disclose his involvement in the company, Wintris Inc., when he was elected to parliament as the Progressive Party leader in 2009. 

Gunnlaugsson, who became prime minister in 2013, is accused of a conflict of interest because the company held interests in failed Icelandic banks that his government was responsible for overseeing. The prime minister walked out of a Swedish television interview Sunday after he was asked about the allegations.

The leaks from the “Panama Papers” come at a time of populist pushback against political and business elites in Europe and the United States. The anger is particularly pronounced in Iceland, an island nation of 330,000 people that has long prided itself for its egalitarianism. That pride was severely tested in 2008 when the collapse of the country’s three private banks led to a deep economic depression. Gunnlaugsson has largely disappointed many who had hoped that Iceland’s social contract would be restored in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Egill Atlason, a Reykjavik resident who attended Monday’s protest, says he's disappointed in Gunnlaugsson not owning up to his apparent mistake.  

"I'm disheartened because he didn't embrace failure," he says, adding that Iceland has done well acknowledging its past mistakes, such as its role in the 2008 financial crisis, and moving on. "It's about taking responsibility."

For many here, the allegations against Gunnlaugsson hit hard because he already was perceived as elitist.

Gutdmundur Ragnar, a lifelong Reykjavik resident and one of the protesters Monday, says he's been unhappy with Iceland’s government for years.  

"Too many promises have been broken," he says. Referring to the Progressive Party's platform to lower debts to foreign creditors following Iceland's three major banks failing in 2008, he adds, "They made promises they would make [a] more equal society." 

Instead, Ragnar says, the government has lowered taxes for the wealthy and created a bigger burden on those who make less.

Many of the protesters carried signs with the phrase, "incompetent government.” Others, including Ragnar, waved bananas. 

"Banana republic," he explains. "It's very hard to get by on a low salary."

Helka Elisabet Adalsteinsdottir and Alma Mjoll, both students at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, understand that first hand. Both women say housing prices have shot up, available student loans are smaller, and health care is increasingly unaffordable. 

"The Icelandic dream was to own your own apartment,” Ms. Mjoll says. “But I can't see that I'd ever own an apartment."

Mjoll says that part of the problem in Iceland is that everyone is too co-dependent, and that people aren't aggressive enough in pursuing change. In any other country where a national leader was found to be on the same list as Russian President Vladmir Putin for holding undisclosed, offshore investments, she says, "there would have been a riot."

Atlason says Monday's protest delivered the government a firm message. 

"We made our point," he says. "In the end, it's at least about the freedom to do those things."

On Monday night, after the crowd dispersed, men in coveralls worked to clean smashed bananas from the parliament building’s walls.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Panama Papers: How Iceland's leader became the leaks' first casualty
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2016/0405/Panama-Papers-How-Iceland-s-leader-became-the-leaks-first-casualty
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe