News

For a while Samherji has been divesting its operations in Namibia. At this point the group has limited remaining exposure to the country. Of the three vessels that have been fishing in Namibian waters over the past year, Geysir, Heinaste and Saga, only one remains in Namibia. This is the factory trawler Heinaste.
– Samherji is very pleased that a case concerning the vessel Heinaste and its captain was resolved in court on Wednesday. This triggers new opportunities, and the Samherji group is dedicated for these opportunities to be realised in Namibia, says Björgólfur Johannsson interim CEO of Samherji.

In RUV’s radio morning show yesterday there was a discussion about The Courage Foundation, a trust set up by WikiLeaks for fundraising the legal defense of whistleblowers and journalists.
It was stated during the discussion that Jóhannes Stefánsson, a former managing director of Samherji, would receive grants from the fund and it was noted that funds were being raised from the public in order to support him.
It has been stated that the purpose of the fundraising is to meet the costs that the beneficiaries believe they need to bear. Radio show host Sigmar Guðmundsson said the fund in question had supported well-known whistleblowers abroad and compared their case with Stefánsson’s case, but stated that the foreign cases were of different nature. "They are fighting with US authorities but Jóhannes Stefánsson is in a fight with the giant company operating here, Samherji," Guðmundsson said.

Samherji has taken steps to implement a corporate governance and compliance system. The decision to implement the system was made based on experience from the company’s operations in Namibia. The new system will be part of the Samherji Group’s future management structure and will cover Samherji and all its subsidiaries.
“Samherji will develop and implement a holistic compliance system based on the company’s risk structure with focus on, among others, anti-corruption, economic sanctions and anti-money laundering,” says Mr. Björgólfur Jóhannsson the interim CEO of Samherji. The system is expected to be implemented and up and running later this year.
“The compliance system will be key in a new internal program, where we will require all employees to take active part in the process to reassess our values, culture and routines. We will implement a system for risk assessment, code of conduct and policies in the compliance system.”

Dear coworkers.
When I took over as the interim CEO of Samherji I knew the company had excellent employees. Otherwise, it would not have become one of the leaders in the European fisheries industry. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the workforce is really outstanding. I have experienced this quite strongly in recent weeks. I have also noticed the great team spirit and corporate culture which means it is always fun at work, no matter what the projects are.
The fierce and unforgiving weather conditions we experienced here in Iceland earlier this month caused considerable damage. The electricity loss following the snowstorm caused a shutdown in our plant in Dalvík for five days which resulted in considerable losses for the company. However, product damage was avoided and some of our employees in Dalvík moved temporarily to our plant in Akureyri, where we increased production while the power was out in Dalvík.

Steingrímur H. Pétursson has been appointed CFO at Samherji's office in the Netherlands. Steingrímur has extensive experience in the Icelandic business community and possesses expertise in the field of finance.
Mr. Pétursson was hired from Hagar where he held the position of Director of Finance and Business Development. Prior to joining Hagar Mr. Pétursson was Director of Finance at Olís for three years. Before that he was one of the managing directors of Eimskip and worked at Sandblástur & Málmhúðun but began his career after completing his university studies at KPMG in Akureyri where he worked for four years.
Mr. Pétursson holds a master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Akureyri and a B.Sc. degree in Business Administration from the University of Iceland. He is married to Linda Björk Sævarsdóttir and they have three children. Samherji warmly welcomes Mr. Pétursson to the team.

Recently, Samherji has examined the data that Wikileaks has published about the company, which is mainly a large volume of emails from Jóhannes Stefánsson's mailbox. This is the data the media has used in its coverage of the activities of companies affiliated with Samherji in Namibia.
Jóhannes had at least 44,028 emails in his mailbox between 2014 and 2016. He handed over 18,497 emails from that period to Wikileaks, which means he only gave Wikileaks 42% of the emails. Most of the emails that Jóhannes decided not to hand over are from 2015. He does not appear to have sent Wikileaks any emails from that year if some mail from January is excluded. This can be clearly seen on the following graph.

This method, to cherry-pick emails, must raise more questions than it answers. What is the content of the unpublished emails? Why were the periods in question chosen but not the whole period? Is there a discrepancy in the data that was not released and the data covered so far by the media?
The fact that 58% of the emails were never published must be food for thought for those who believe that Jóhannes Stefánsson's account of events is correct and consistent with the truth. The members of the media that have covered this story also have to consider if .......

Earlier this month, Samherji hired the law firm Wikborg Rein in Norway to assist in investigating the allegations made against the company because of its operations in Namibia. Priority was given to reviewing payments to the company Cape Cod FS.

Stundin and RÚV have stated that Samherji owned the company Cape Cod FS and that JPC Shipmanagement, which provided services to Samherji’s companies, “held” the ownership of Cape Cod FS for Samherji. This is wrong, and there is nothing in Wikborg Rein's investigation that indicates otherwise. Samherji does not own and has never owned Cape Cod FS and has never assigned others to “hold” the ownership of the company.

Cape Cod FS was owned by JPC Shipmanagement, which provided companies affiliated with Samherji with crewing of vessels in the group's operations. Purchasing the services of such companies is well known in international shipping operations.

Both Stundin and RÚV have incorrectly stated that about 70 million dollars was paid to Cape Cod FS because of operations in Namibia. The fact is that 28,9 million dollars was paid to the company in relation to operations in Namibia.

It has been stated in the Icelandic media that the payments to Cape Cod FS are unexplained and abnormal. This is wrong. Namibia has capital controls. In order to make payments out of the Namibian economy various documents are required to verify the payment due to the controls. For this reason, information on payments to each crew member along with a copy of his passport has to be sent to the bank that handles the transactions, which forwards the information to The Bank of Namibia. In order to ensure that all crew members were paid in accordance with their contract, the payments were reviewed by both Cape Cod FS and an employee of a company affiliated with Samherji before the transactions were made.

The amounts that were paid to Cape Cod FS were reviewed. The investigation suggests that the payments were in line with market fees at the time. It was an extensive operation and therefore the amounts paid to the company were not unreasonable due to salaries paid to crew members over a long period of time.

 "The allegations made about the ownership of Cape Cod and the payments made to the company are wrong. The investigation will continue and the relevant authorities will be provided with all findings,” says Björgólfur Jóhannsson, the interim CEO of Samherji. It is expected that Stundin, RÚV and others will correct wrong news reports that have been published about Cape Cod FS. 

Photos taken when Björgólfur Jóhannsson takes over as CEO of Samherji and Thorsteinn Már Baldvinsson steps aside for the time being

The new trawler Hardbakur EA 3 arrived in hometown Akureyri on November 9th.

Fish Festival in Dalvík "The Great Fish day" is an annual festival in Dalvíkurbyggð held on the second Saturday of August. Photos by Bjarni Eiriksson.