I Spy, With My Kókómjólk Eye

A story of not so private, not so intelligent private intelligence

Wednesday, April 29th at 20:05, half of Iceland sat down to watch an episode of Kveikur, a news programme on RÚV, the National Broadcasting Service. Those who didn’t would do so in the following days to keep up with the national conversation.

On the programme, it was reported that in the autumn of 2012 two former police officers, Guðmundur Haukur Guðmundsson and Jón Óttar Ólafsson, along with then-current police officer, Lúðvík Kristinsson, were hired by lawyer Birgir Már Ragnarsson, on the behalf of Iceland’s richest man, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, to spy on a number of private citizens.

The private citizens in question had one thing in common: they were all a part of a class action suit against Björgólfur Thor in regards to the bankruptcy of Landsbankinn in 2008, of which Björgólfur was the biggest shareholder. Björgólfur Thor wanted to link the class action lawsuit to his nemesis and former business partner Róbert Wessman, being convinced that he was behind it.

A million a day keeps the…

The surveillance took place for just over a month. The law firm Landslög, which oversaw the class action lawsuit, was under constant video surveillance via a camera placed in the windscreen of a rental car, packed into a carton of Icelandic-brand chocolate milk, Kókómjólk. Other participants in the class action suit, such as former Independence Party MP Vilhjálmur Bjarnason, were kept under close surveillance and his schedule recorded in minute detail. The whole operation cost Björgólfur Thor over 30 million ISK, yielded no tangible information, and it remains unknown how the more than 100 hours of video and hundreds of pictures taken during the operation leaked to RÚV.

“The law firm Landslög, which oversaw the class action lawsuit, was under constant video surveillance via a camera placed in a windscreen of a rental car, packed into a carton of Icelandic-brand chocolate milk, Kókómjólk.”

The class action lawsuit, which was aimed at Björgólfur Thor for having deceived shareholders and concealed information regarding Landsbankinn’s excessive loans to Björgólfur Thor and his family, was later settled out of court.

The not so secret life of Jón Óttar Ólafsson

The disclosure also brought back into focus other more recent activities of main perpetrator Jón Óttar Ólafsson at the behest of other rich Icelanders. In 2021 it came to light that Jón Óttar had received 135 million ISK for his work for fisheries giant Samherji in 2013 in relation to an investigation into the company’s affairs by the Central Bank of Iceland.

In 2021, it was also revealed that Jón Óttar had worked for Samherji in covertly trying to undermine the reputation of journalist Helgi Seljan, following his report on the activities of Samherji in Namibia which caused much stir in Iceland in late 2019. In 2022, Helgi Seljan revealed in an interview that he had been stalked by Jón Óttar over a period of time. Ironically, the RÚV reporter who broke the 2012 surveillance story is the same Helgi Seljan.