Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson walked out of a TV interview this week after being asked about his role in a scheme to shelter assets overseas, something revealed in the so-called Panama Papers.
An interviewer asked Gunnlaugsson about his relationship to a company called Wintris Inc., and the prime minister struggles to explain that his wife sold a part of a family company that was put “in care of a bank.”
“[T]he bank made some arrangement, and this company was the result,” he said. “I don’t know how these things work.”
He then gets up from his seat and accuses the reporter of “asking me about things I haven’t acquainted myself with” before leaving the interview. “You are asking me nonsense.”
Gunnlaugsson, who the papers revealed had retained investments in the British Virgin Islands, said in a statement that he would be handing his responsibilities over to his vice chairman “for an unspecified amount of time.”
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The premier’s investments included debt in a trio of failed Icelandic banks, for whom Gunnlaugsson had engaged in negotiations with creditors. The country has had long-standing capital controls in place as a result of the economic crisis.
The documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca over the weekend revealed that at least two other Icelandic officials, Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson and Minister of the Interior Olof Nordal, also have ties to offshore companies that they failed to disclose.
The documents suggest Gunnlaugsson purchased at least one offshore shell company, Wintris, from Mossack Fonseca in 2007 in order to invest millions in inherited money. He did not disclose that arrangement when he entered parliament two years later.
The revelation, coupled with Gunnlaugsson’s response, resulted in protests outside the parliament in Reykjavik, and protesters reportedly express their dissatisfaction with the situation by hurling eggs and yogurt.
Gunnlaugsson becomes the country’s second premier to resign in seven years. For now, he will continue as the chairman of his Progressive Party.
Mossack Fonseca said in a statement that the firm “may have been the victim of a data breach,” but that “nothing we’ve seen in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests we’ve done anything illegal, and that’s very much in keeping with the global reputation we’ve built over the past 40 years of doing business the right way.”
