Nick Cohen: Þegar Kaupþing stöðvaði Ekstrabladet

Í síðustu færslu skrifaði ég um bók sem nefnist You Can't Read This Book eftir Nick Cohen.

Í bókinni er meðal annars fjallað um tilraunir auðmanna og stórfyrirtækja til að þagga niður í fjölmiðlum með eilífum hótunum um málsóknir. Meiðyrðalöggjöfin í Bretlandi er mjög hentug í þessu tilliti.

Eitt dæmið sem Cohen nefnir í bókinni er þegar Kaupþing var að reyna að stöðva umfjöllun Ekstrabladet í Danmörku um bankann, þetta var árið 2006. Dönsku blaðamennirnir voru að leita skýringa á furðulegum vexti þessa banka. Kaupþing reyndi að þagga niður í blaðinu í Danmörku, en það gekk ekki. Þá var farið á heimavöll íslensku auðkýfinganna – til London þar sem þeir hafa lært flest sín brögð – og varð bankanum meira ágengt.

London er nánast eins og heimavöllur fyrir illa fengið fé alls staðar að úr veröldinni – frá Rússlandi, Arabaríkjum, Afríku og víðar – og handhafar þess njóta mikillar verndar þar.

Svo hljóma nokkrar málsgreinar úr bók Cohens, þetta er fengið af vef The Observer sem birti kafla úr bókinni:

„Instead of being a means of establishing facts, the law became a device deployed by lawyers, who tellingly began to call themselves „reputation managers“. A dubious businessman trying to make his way in English society would make a show of contributing to charities. He might buy some fine art, or donate to the opera, so he could pose as something more refined than a money-grubbing philistine. He would contribute to a political party in the hope, nearly always realised, of buying himself a peerage. And if anyone tried to query his philanthropic reputation, he could divert a small part of his fortune to a reputation manager who would manage the offender with writs and deter others from following the story.

In 2006, reporters on the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet decided to investigate the stunning rise of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which was buying assets across Denmark. How, they asked, had a bank from a volcanic island without the resources to support a huge and voracious financial sector become so powerful? The newsdesk decided they should concentrate on the links between the bank, Russian oligarchs and tax havens. Kaupthing was furious. It was accustomed to receiving praise from the financial press for the entrepreneurial dynamism of its managers. It threatened to sue Ekstra Bladet in Copenhagen and at the same time filed a complaint with the Danish Press Council, which handled cases of breaches of press ethics.

The paper defended its journalism and the Danish Press Council rejected the banks complaint. Kaupthing withdrew its Danish lawsuit and the argument seemed to be over until Ekstra Bladets bewildered editors heard that the bank was now suing them in London. The costs were beyond anything they had experienced before. In Denmark, lawyers consider a libel action that costs £25,000 expensive. In London, lawyers for Kaupthing and Ekstra Bladet ran up costs of close to £1m before the case came to court. Ekstra Bladet could not run the risk of doubling, maybe trebling, the bill if it lost. It agreed to pay substantial damages to Kaupthing, cover its legal expenses and carry a formal apology on its website.

A few months later, Kaupthing, along with the other entrepreneurial, go-ahead Icelandic banks, collapsed. Icelands GDP fell by 65%, one-third of the population said they were considering emigration and the British and Dutch governments demanded compensation equivalent to the output of the entire Icelandic economy for the lost deposits of their citizens in Kaupthing and other banks.

Two points are worth flagging. The Danish journalists did not predict the collapse, but instead showed they had the nose for trouble that all good reporters possess. They could sense that there was something wrong with banks from a country with a population no larger than that of Coventry, buying overpriced foreign assets and acquiring the debts to match without having a government capable of acting as a lender of last resort in an emergency. Kaupthing went for the paper in England – not just because it wanted to kill the original story, but because it also wanted to deter others from spreading the idea that Iceland was not a safe place for investors. The English legal profession obliged. It placed the bank off-limits. Newspapers lawyers thought once, twice… a hundred times before authorising critical stories.

As events were to turn out, the English legal profession had also stopped the British investors who were to lose deposits worth $30bn in Iceland from learning that there was a whiff of danger around the countrys banks, although no lawyer showed any remorse about that.

A second point staggered foreigners. Even though Kaupthing was an Icelandic bank challenging a Danish newspaper, it was able to go to London to find a legal system willing and able to provide the coercive pressure it required. Most people would assume that what Danes wrote about Icelanders was none of Englands business. Englands lawyers thought differently.“

Nick Cohen, höfundur bókanna What's Left? og You Can't Read This Book. Hann er einhver öflugasti og óhræddasti þjóðfélagsrýnir sem nú er uppi á Bretlandi.