The Prime Minister’s committee that was formed to investigate the legality of Magma Energy’s purchase of HS Orka is to submit its findings today, and sources close to the newspaper Fréttablaðið are saying that the ruling is mixed at best.
Magma Energy, a Canadian company, used a Swedish puppet company in order to acquire HS Orka, Iceland’s third largest power company. Last July, the government put a freeze on the purchase, and assembled a committee to investigate the legality of the transaction. Magma, for its part, ignored the freeze and continued payments anyway.
Sources close to Fréttablaðið say that the committee is to submit its findings today, and that in only one of a possible four interpretations of the law did Magma Energy do anything illegal. According to the sources, the sale fulfills Icelandic law, unless the law is read in such a way that the Icelandic government believes it was Magma Energy of Canada – not Sweden – that is attempting to acquire HS Orka.
This is a company which, incidentally, told Grapevine in September 2009 that they had no intention of acquiring a majority stake in HS Orka, and that the economic collapse had nothing to do with their speculation in the country – both of which turned out to be false – and now says they have no intention to conduct geological explorations outside of the Reykjanes area.