Jóhannes Stefánsson (1973) is the former Director of Operations in Namibia for Icelandic fishing company Samherji and a whistleblower known as the source of the

Fishrot Files On 12 November 2019, WikiLeaks began publishing what it called the Fishrot Files ( is, Samherjaskjölin), a collection of thousands of documents and email communication by employees of one of Iceland's largest fish industry companies, Samherji, th ...

( is, Samherjaskjölin), which included thousands of the company's documents, emails and other files. The files and Jóhannes' testimony allegedly show that the company paid hundreds of millions to

senior officials Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to: * Senior (name), a surname ...

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and e ...

to get the country's fishing quota and have led to high profile resignations and arrests in at least 27 countries.

Career

Jóhannes worked as a fisherman for ten years before taking more managerial positions at a fish factory. He worked his way to foreman, and then started traveling the world looking for opportunities for Samherji in 2007. In 2011 he came to Namibia where foreign companies weren't allowed to bid on fishing quotes, but local bidders could resell their rights. Samherji sent him to Walvis Bay in Namibia to sign deals and manage the business. Jóhannes says he helped Samherji inflate fees, evade taxes, and engage in transfer pricing violations. From 2013 to July 2016, Jóhannes was the managing director for Arcticnam Fishing, co-owned by Samherji, and the Director of Operations in Namibia for Samherji. Jóhannes says that in 2016, his feelings of guilt grew and he decided to quit Samherji while on a trip to

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second larges ...

. With the help of an IT specialist, he downloaded 38,000 emails from his work account, along with memos, photos and videos from a shared

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2 ...

account onto five hard drives over two days. Jóhannes's employment with Samherji formally ended in December 2016.

Whistleblowing

By July 2016, Jóhannes decided to go public. Jóhannes says he started receiving threats, that false rumors were spread about him and that his food was poisoned. Jóhannes stayed in South Africa, protected by bodyguards until 10 January 2017. In August 2018, Jóhannes started working with the investigation team in Namibia and special units of the Namibian government. The PPLAAF took the threats to his safety seriously enough to help him. After returning to Iceland, he contacted

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

and began working on the Fishrot Files with

Kristinn Hrafnsson Kristinn Hrafnsson (born 25 June 1962) is an Icelandic investigative journalist who has been the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks since 2018. He was the spokesperson for WikiLeaks between 2010 and 2017. Career He has worked at various newspapers i ...

. The two decided to partner with RUV,

Stundin ''Stundin'' is an Icelandic bi-weekly newspaper known for investigative journalism. It takes the form of both an online newspaper and a news magazine. It was founded in 2015 by former staff of DV after a hostile takeover of the paper. It was fu ...

and Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit. On 12 November 2019, WikiLeaks began publishing the Fishrot Files. On the same day, Jóhannes said on RÚV's investigative program that Samherji's CEO authorized the bribes. Jóhannes admits he committed crimes, but believes he acted on behalf of the company, saying "I violated the law on behalf of Samherji while I was there. I was the man to get the quotas and the connections, on my superiors’ orders."

After Fishrot

On 1 March 2021, a crowd-funding campaign was announced to raise funds for Jóhannes, who said he believes he was poisoned. The campaign was organised by Whistleblowing International, ANA LOGO, Whistleblower Network News and the

National Whistleblower Center The National Whistleblower Center (NWC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax exempt, educational and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1988 by the lawyers Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, LLP. As of March 2019, John Kostyack is th ...

. In October 2021, he won the WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stefánsson, Jóhannes 1973 births 2019 in international relations 2019 in Iceland 2019 in Namibia 2019 in Norway 2019 scandals Corruption in Namibia Corruption in Norway People associated with WikiLeaks Living people News leaks Jóhannes Stefánsson