Iceland's Health Minister Took 47 Million Kronur Through Hospital Partnership, Disclosed Only Part

• Möller's partnership with husband Torfi Fjalar Jónasson collected 47 million kronur total from Akureyri Hospital through contractor arrangements, of which roughly 30 million remained after facility fees
• Payments for cardiac ultrasound examinations — over 9 million kronur in 2023 alone — were initially omitted from Möller's disclosures to parliament
• Möller exited the partnership on 2 October as scrutiny intensified; the company was promptly renamed from 'Jónasson og Möller' to 'Mánaberg'
• Opposition MP Ingibjörg Isaksen links the hospital director's forced departure to the husband's expressed no-confidence in hospital management over the contractor dispute

Iceland's Health Minister Alma Möller co-owned a partnership company that collected roughly 47 million kronur in contractor payments from Akureyri Hospital — the same institution whose director recently resigned after Möller's ministry advertised her position as vacant. RÚV reports that over 9 million kronur in payments for cardiac ultrasound examinations in 2023 were initially left out of Möller's disclosures to the Althingi (Iceland's parliament), emerging only after the newsroom pressed for details. The payments were made to a partnership Möller co-founded with her husband, cardiologist Torfi Fjalar Jónasson, who is both a salaried employee of the hospital and a contractor billing it through the same entity.

The arrangement worked like this: Jónasson performed cardiac procedures and ultrasound examinations at Akureyri Hospital as a contractor, billing through the partnership in which Möller held a 30 percent stake since its founding in 2012. Of the 47 million kronur total, roughly 17 million went back to the hospital as facility fees, leaving the partnership with over 30 million in net revenue. When the hospital moved last autumn to terminate contractor agreements with thirteen doctors — including Jónasson — on grounds that the arrangements constituted sham contracting, the affected physicians pushed back hard enough to delay the terminations until September 2025.

What happened next is where the conflict-of-interest questions sharpen. Ingibjörg Isaksen, an MP from the Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkurinn), told parliament that Jónasson had expressed no confidence in the hospital's management over the contractor dispute. Shortly after, Möller's ministry decided to advertise the hospital director's position — effectively forcing out Hildigunnur Svavarsdóttir, who resigned immediately. Svavarsdóttir has declined to comment. Isaksen has now directly questioned whether Möller is fit to appoint the hospital's next director, given her financial ties to the institution through her husband.

Möller exited the partnership on 2 October, the same period media scrutiny intensified. The company was renamed from "Jónasson og Möller slf." to "Mánaberg slf." — a cosmetic change that does nothing to unwind the years of payments already received. On 6 October, Möller told the Althingi she would recuse herself from matters related to the contractor agreements at Akureyri Hospital. Isaksen argues the recusal came too late, given that the partnership had been collecting payments for over a decade.

Iceland has 383,000 people. The health minister's husband is a specialist at a regional hospital. The hospital's director reports to the health minister's ministry. The specialist's income flows through a company the minister co-owned. In a larger country, arm's-length institutions and formal separation of powers would make this configuration difficult to sustain. In Iceland, it operated for years without disclosure — until a newsroom asked for the numbers.

Data on the partnership's payments for 2024 and 2025 have not yet been provided. Möller's office says the figures will be forwarded once Akureyri Hospital supplies them.

Sources: RÚV