Four former bosses from the Icelandic bank Kaupthing have been sentenced to between three and five years in prison for market abuses relating to a large stake taken in the bank by a Qatari sheikh just before it collapsed in 2008.

Four former bosses from the
Icelandic bank Kaupthing have been sentenced to between three and five years in
prison for market abuses relating to a large stake taken in the bank by a
Qatari sheikh just before it collapsed in 2008.

The four were convicted at a Reykjavik district court on Thursday of misleading
investors by allowing a sheikh of Qatar's ruling
Al-Thani family to buy a 5.1 percent in the bank with funds loaned from the
bank itself.

Special
prosecutor Olafur Hauksson said that the loans granted by the bank was a move to
boost share price.

Hreioar Mar
Sigurosson, Kaupthing’s former chief executive, was sentenced to five and a half
years in prison, while former chairman
Sigurdur Einarsson received a five-year sentence.

Magnus Guomundsson,
former CEO of the bank’s branch in Luxembourg, was sentenced to three
and a half years and Olafur Olafsson, Kaupthing’s second largest shareholder at
the time, was given three years.

None of the accused were in
court for the decision, but it is expected they will appeal.

The case is by far the largest brought against former
employees of Iceland's
failed banks by the special prosecutor since the financial crisis in 2008.

Relative to the size of its economy,
Iceland's
systematic banking collapse is the largest suffered by any country in economic history.
Kaupthing and other Icelandic banks aggressively expanded overseas leading up
to the global financial crisis and their collapse in 2008 led to an economic
crisis which helped bring the country's economy to its knees.