seizure of assets

there was a legal case in Iceland a few years ago, it was an convoluted property rights case, can't remember the details, but it involved who had ownership when there was delivery but no payment nor explicit assumption of ownership and then a third party intercedes

anyway, the interesting thing about the case, is that it was decided on precedent case law, from a case from about 1000 years earlier
having a continuous constitutional and common law with an extended history can be quite enabling

the Vikings were mostly traders, rather than raiders, and property rights were quite important, though not always with the same "rights" found in modern anglo-saxon democracies.
Different histories, different contingencies and different facts on the ground: for example trespass laws are much weaker in Iceland than in the UK and US, while the right of innocent passage is much stronger - this, I think, is because the land is linear - if you lived a fjord or two over from the market town, there'd usually only be one coastal path that was clear, and the interceding landowners had to let you through, no other way to sell or buy necessities. Simpler than having local small scale warfare each time someone needed to take a herd of sheep to market.

So, Iceland, I hear, has now made two legal moves.

First, a new law passed as of 7 hours ago, abolishes the directorship of the central bank of Iceland, leaving the three bank directors unemployed; a new chief director and assistants position is established and is to be advertised immediately.
Good riddance, and I hope the people in charge will now actually hire some sane professional.

Secondly, a cross-party delegation met with the new finance minister requesting that the assets of former commercial bank managers, investment bankers and owners of certain investments firms be frozen.
Finance minister, as I understand, said a special prosecutor has been appointed, with power to freeze and, if necessary, seize assets, pending discovery of illegal behaviour.
Now, the problem with deregulation is that with it a lot of stupid and unethical things are all of a sudden legal.
On the other hand, very broad legal concepts, like fraudulent conveyance, cover a lot of illegal behaviour.

Next may be seizure of passports pending prosecution, and co-ordination with international authorities to recover assets. I suspect co-operation on such may be slightly better than in the past; although the US will have to help lean on the caribbean havens, much as the swiss are now finally being squeezed.