Iceland premier resigns
Gunnlaugsson quits following outcry over offshore revelations
REYKJAVIK: A member of the Icelandic government says that embattled Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson will resign amid the controversy over his offshore holdings.
Agriculture Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson told Icelandic broadcaster RUV that Gunnlaugsson was stepping down as leader of the country’s coalition government.
Opposition lawmakers say Gunnlaugsson’s offshore holdings amounted to a major conflict of interest with his job.
Gunnlaugsson is the first major scalp from a leak of more than 11 million documents from a Panamanian law firm showing tax-avoidance arrangements of the rich and famous around the world.
Earlier yesterday, President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson had denied Gunnlaugsson’s request to call a snap election.
Gunnlaugsson had previously told parliament he would not resign, even as thousands of angry protesters demanded that he step down and call new elections because of leaked documents that raised questions about his financial affairs.
The leaked documents have sparked a media investigation of possible links to an offshore company that could represent a serious conflict of interest.
“I have not considered quitting because of this matter, nor am I going to quit because of this matter,” a defiant Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson told parliament yesterday.
“The government has had good results. Progress has been strong and it is important that the government can finish its work.”
He left the building as protesters gathered outside. Police estimated the crowd at 8,000 people – a throng called by duty officer Arnar Runar Marteinsson the largest protest he had ever seen in Reykjavik.
Participants blew whistles, banged pots and pans, set off fireworks and stomped the barricades separating the protest site from the parliament building.
The sound was deafening and reminiscent of the sustained protests in 2008 and 2009 that led to the fall of the government after a financial collapse crippled the island nation.
News reports have alleged that Gunnlaugsson and his wife set up a company in the British Virgin Islands with the help of a Panamanian law firm at the centre of a massive tax evasion leak.
He told parliament he and his wife had paid all their taxes in full and he denied having assets in a tax haven.