Ex-Iceland PM Geir Haarde to escape punishment despite guilty verdict over banking collapse Mr Haarde, who is believed to be the only government leader in the world to face prosecution over the fallout from the financial crisis, was acquitted of three other charges. However, the court announced on Monday that Mr Haarde will face no punishment, and the state would pay his expenses in defending the case. "Geir Haarde will not be punished," Markus Sigurbjornsson, the head of the court said as he began reading out the verdict. The 15 members of the Landsdomur, a special court founded in 1905 to deal with criminal charges against Icelandic government ministers, returned a 500-page verdict, but only a brief summary was announced in public. The guilty charge related to Mr Haarde's failure to keep his ministers adequately informed through formal meetings, according to the ruling. Iceland is still recovering from a crisis that resulted in the collapse of its three leading banks in 2008, sent its currency into a nose dive, caused inflation to soar and resulted in the country needing a $10bn bail-out by the International Monetary Fund to stabilise the situation. The country's debt was recently upgraded to investment grade by ratings agency Fitch, which praised Iceland's progress "in restoring macroeconomic stability, pushing ahead with structural reform and rebuilding sovereign creditworthiness since the 2008 banking and currency crisis."