Letter to coworkers
Dear coworkers
Yesterday, RUV continued its long-standing attack on Samherji with coverage that was quite unbelievable. During an episode of Kveikur, old news from Cyprus was recycled, and auditors were brought to the fore who made all sorts of assertions without justification. Finally, a new Namibian citizen was presented that no one within Samherji has heard of until now.
Long sections of the coverage were quite theatrical. For example, the RUV reporters appeared surprised that no one answered the doorbell at an office in Limassol, Cyprus. It seemed that they were the only ones unaware of the fact that the city was in complete lockdown. In addition, their search for Samherji's offices could have been significantly shortened, as all of Samherji's operations in Cyprus moved to the Netherlands just over six months ago. All the Cyprus coverage seemed to be focused on the fact that Samherji had avoided paying income tax there. Still, at the same time, it was claimed that there was no profit in Cyprus because it had all been moved overseas to another jurisdiction. It's hard to see how these two can go together.
Samherji has now finally obtained the report written by the two eager auditors who made bold statements in yesterday's episode. The report was prepared at the request of Samherji's former partners and RUV's current partners, who have recently filed various lawsuits against us without any success. The report contains numerous caveats (see below) where the auditors admit, among other things, that they never spoke to anyone from Samherji, had only limited access to data and could not perform a valuation of the main assets. However, no mention was made of these reservations in Kveikur, and the auditors were not asked about them. It should come as no surprise with regard to the working methods of RUV.
One striking example is that the authors of the report claim that the Namibian partners' share, who commissioned the report, in the company Arcticnam should have been net 80 million US dollars and Samherji's share 70 million dollars. Samherji's share was then to cover all costs, such as oil, crew salaries, packaging, maintenance and rental of ships. It should be evident to everyone that the report's authors are on a wild goose chase.
The show presented an individual, Mr. Tobie Aupindi, the Namibian Fish Consumption Fund's former chairman. No one within Samherji has heard of this person before. The episode claimed that Mr. Aupindi had been paid 1 million Namibian dollars in cash in 2012 for the allocation of quotas. The claim is based on a statement from Jóhannes Stefánsson that he withdrew cash and paid this man. This statement contradicts two other signed statements made by Mr. Stefánsson in connection with unresolved disputes in Namibia. One is signed on 21 February 2018 and the other on 23 January 2019 (see below). In both of these statements, Mr. Stefánsson confirms that he paid this specific amount to a completely different person, Mr. Virgillo J de Sousa. The journalists hosting Kveikur had reported on this before, even though they seemed to be unaware of it during the making of yesterday's episode. Thus, the reporters have now revealed the untruthfulness of their primary source.
Yesterday's episode has not disturbed my peace, and it is clear that nothing in it will give the District Prosecutor any grounds for action here in Iceland. No assertions were made that cannot be refuted, and we will do so, in our way, in the near future.
I want to thank all of you again for your support. Together we will go through this as we have done before.
Best regards and enjoy your weekend,
Þorsteinn Már
