Iceland’s former premier, Geir Haarde, yesterday became the first political leader to be tried over the global financial crisis as judges began to decide whether he can be held responsible for the collapse of the country’s banking sector.

Haarde, who has dismissed the case as a farce, was one of four politicians blamed in a report last year for contributing to the country’s stunning economic collapse, when all its major banks failed in a matter of weeks in October 2008.

But parliament voted last September that he was the only one who should be charged with “gross neglect” and he will thus become the first person to go before the Landsdomur, a never-before used special court for current and ex-ministers.

Haarde, who was set to present his third request for a dismissal, said last week that his arguments for throwing out the charges would be published after the hearing.

Haarde insisted the whole trial was “a political farce motivated by some old political enemies who are cloaking this farce under the cover of a political trial”.

Political analysts have criticised the decision by the parliament, or Althingi, to press charges against the former prime minister.

“Unfortunately the Althingi did not move wisely when it decided to press charges,” said Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson, a political science professor at the University of Iceland. He claimed that personal vendettas by members of the then opposition lay behind the charges.

Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson has been one of Haarde’s toughest opponents and has argued that the case is important.

“When it became clear we were heading towards catastrophe… the record shows very little was done to avoid it,” Sigfusson said recently, explaining why he felt the trial was needed.

Kristinsson said while finding Haarde guilty “may be in accordance with the law… to single him out and make him alone accountable for the crash is obviously not in accordance with the people’s sense of justice”.

Haarde has insisted that his government “saved the country from bankruptcy”, claiming that if it had acted differently when the banks failed in 2008, the economy could have fallen off a cliff.

The bank failure plunged Iceland into a deep recession and sent the krona’s value falling. – Sapa-AFP