An investigation brought by the Icelandic Central Bank against seafood company, Samherji, for incorrectly calculated fish prices has been dismissed following a lack of evidence.
The Central Bank’s allegations, first made four years ago, were based on “incorrectly calculated weighted averages”. In a letter to employees, CEO Thorsteinn Már Baldvinsson explained “this was later confirmed in the decree of the district court which revealed that the Central Bank had got its figures wrong”.
The bank confiscated a “huge volume” of documentation – over a hundred boxes and around half a million electronic documents.
“Despite our offers of assistance all information was withheld from us and thus we could neither correct misrepresentations nor defence ourselves,” Mr Már Baldvinsson.
Mr Már Baldvinsson himself says he was also “interrogated” because of the Central Bank’s complaint involving the sale of five tonnes of arctic char during a period of 39 months at a price which, according to a Central bank estimate, was ISK 2m (US$15,700) too low. Samherji says the Central Bank’s ‘evidence’ was the result of overlooking “widely differing conditions of delivery and divergent market conditions”.
The letter concluded: “I wish to emphasise this to you once more; after a wide-ranging and detailed investigation by the special prosecutor the conclusion was clear: the investigation revealed nothing to indicate any illegal actions, neither by myself nor any other Samherji staff. The dismissal of the case was solely based on this substantive conclusion by the prosecutor’s office.”
