The British Treasury has recovered a total of £1.36bn from Iceland after the collapse of Landsbanki during the country’s economic crisis, forced a taxpayer bailout for 230,000 British savers.
After the collapse in October 2008, the UK government paid out £4.5bn, which operated high-interest British-based online accounts through the Icesave brand. However, the UK’s Economic Secretary to the Treasury Andrea Leadsom said she had been pushing Icelandic ministers to return the UK taxpayers’ money more quickly.
The Treasury revealed that at present, £3.82bn of the Landsbanki funds had been recovered, 85 per cent of its overall loan, which is scheduled to be fully paid off by 2017. The payment on Thursday, the fifth in a series of installments, will be used to reduce the national debt.
Ms Leadsom explained that a key part of the long term economic goal is ensuring taxpayers were reunited with their money following the financial crisis, which included Iceland’s banking crash in 2008. She said this cost British taxpayers billions of pounds ant that they had no idea they would ever see that money again.
She went on to say that they are still committed to recovering the amount in full, and will continue to work as hard as possible to ensure it happened.