How much time will Iceland bankers spend in jail?

[FrodosPet]

Can anyone have a better layman's source for understanding the Icelandic financial crisis? Are there more people going to jail, or are any of these guys looking at additional charges? It seems kinda light to be celebrating the idea of "Iceland is jailing its banksters" when I know people who have done more time on possession charges in a much less comfortable jail them most of these will.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932012_Icelandic_financial_crisis#Convictions

Convictions

- Baldur Guðlaugsson, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, was sentenced to two years probation by the District Court of Reykjavík for insider trading. The case was remitted to the Supreme Court of Iceland which upheld the ruling.

- Aron Karlsson was sentenced to 2 years in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for defrauding Arion Bank in real estate dealings.

- Lárus Welding, CEO of Glitnir, and Guðmundur Hjaltason, Managing Director of Corporate Banking of Glitnir, were sentenced to 9 months in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for a major breach of trust. Out of the 9 months, 6 are probationary for 2 years.

- Friðfinnur Ragnar Sigurðsson, Glitnir employee, was sentenced to 1 year in prison by the District Court of Reykjanes for insider trading.

[Scuba]

1. A year in the joint is kinda light ...

... unless you compare it to the "punishment" received by American banksters.

[FrodosPet]

2. Except for this one

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/177_114/orion-ceo-sentenced-jail-regulators-lie-1050103-1.html

The former chief executive of a failed Florida community bank has been sentenced to six years in prison for lying to regulators about the bank's condition.

Jerry Williams, who headed Orion Bank in Naples for roughly two decades, pleaded guilty in February to conspiring with two other executives and one borrower to mislead its state and federal examiners about its capital levels in the months before it failed in November 2009.

~ snip ~

[FrodosPet]

3. Ex-Goldman director Rajat Gupta

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/bankers-behind-bars_n_2011877.html

Ex-Goldman director Rajat Gupta is going to jail for two years for insider trading, where he'll be joining some of his former peers.

~ snip ~

[FrodosPet]

4. Why have so few bankers gone to jail?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-why-few-bankers-gone-to-jail

~ snip ~

One reason so few bankers have been jailed is that it has proved difficult for prosecutors to connect wrongdoing low down in a large financial organisation—submitting false LIBOR estimates, say—to senior executives running the bank. Although the bosses may create or perpetuate a culture in which those lower down the ranks feel entitled or expected to abandon morality, there is seldom a chain of e-mails or other direct instructions that actually advocates wrongdoing. A second reason for the paucity of prosecutions is that in capitalist societies where risk-taking is seen as a necessary part of business, it is not actually illegal to run a bank, or any other company, into the ground.

~ snip ~

------------------------------------------------------

To put someone in jail requires evidence of specific laws broken. Just saying "This is f*cked up, people need to serve time" is not enough to go to a jury with.

There were undoubtedly laws broken. But preparing and presenting such complex cases is arduous and expensive. And getting a random group of twelve citizens to be able to focus for the weeks or months such cases require, and having them able to make a well informed decision, is a crapshoot.

And then too is the fact that what many of them did was immoral, but not necessarily illegal. Should it be? In many cases yes. But passing strict new laws on reporting and risk taking can only cover going forward. You cannot pass retroactive laws to whack them.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. Convictions for laundering hundreds of billions

But not a minute in jail.

[LuvNewcastle]

6. It seems to me that the cases I've read about

from western Europe in which people were given prison sentences, the prison time was a good deal shorter than a sentence would be in America. Their prison conditions are much better, too. I suspect the reason for that is because their cultures aren't as obsessed with punishment and revenge. Or maybe it doesn't take as much for their criminals to get the message.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. I do not believe you have known people jailed in Iceland for possession

unless it was smack and lots of it, trafficking amounts, Iceland does not do long prison terms.

[FrodosPet]

8. I was talking about here in the USA

Sorry, I should have been more clear.