Serious Fraud Office (SFO) launches Libor investigation

Serious Fraud Office (SFO) launches Libor investigation

www.bbc.co.uk

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has confirmed that it has formally launched an investigation into the rigging of the inter-bank lending rate, Libor.

Earlier this week, it said it was considering whether criminal prosecutions would be possible.

An SFO spokesperson confirmed that a dedicated case team had now started work.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.abovetopsecret.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
The LIBOR Scandal is the Biggest Scandal in History - Every Human on the Planet has been Ripped Off!
Barclays fined for attempts to manipulate key bank rates
FSA finds banks guilty of mis-selling to small firms
Tony Robinson calls out British banking system. Must Watch. "Not Even Human"

About time too..

Took them long enough to realise a crime has been committed by many banks..
Not just Barclays.

This, though, will in no way stem the flow of anger from the people.
Our tax money bailed them out, only for some of that money to pay the fine imposed..

Now I hope we get a result from this and they are either shut down and/or locked up.. don't care who it is.. lock the thieving swines up.

I'm sure many of you have been following the many threads in regards to this issue..
Please let's keep the pressure on the banksters..make them sweat..

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

If I were in charge as a dictator, any bank found guilty of this would find:

* Its entire executive board jailed,
* The executive board members homes/yachts/cars/bank accounts confiscated under the "proceeds of crime" law.
* The executive board members banned from ever working in the financial industry after their jail term.
* The bank itself will be nationalised, permanently, as they can't be trusted to play fair.

However, Im not in charge. What will happen is they will recieve fines that when compared to how much their crime earned them, are tiny. Then they are told they are bad boys and girls, and are not to do it again. Hardly a deterrent, iis it?

reply to post by Extralien


It needs to be a thorough investigation, no stone unturned everyone involved in this should get jailtime, even those that may not have been involved but knew it was going on yet stood by and said nothing. Those people are just as bad as the perps.

We need an end to all corruption.

The government investigating itself. Funny.

Two outcomes:

1) A sacrificial lamb takes the fall and they use the crisis to pass laws and support the slave system.

2) They find no wrong doing.

The end result - you'll have no more freedom tomorrow than yesterday - probably less.

I posted this on another thread, at least some of the MPs get it, of course yesterday they voted for paliamentary inquiry instead of public, I suspect that will change with the next revelations though, some great comments from

Clive Efford who even used the word treason

I have given way twice and I will not give way any more because of lack of time.

Fundamental change in this House would be required of the type that simply has not taken place. It is such fundamental reform that we need, rather than the messing about that we have with the House of Lords, which will go absolutely nowhere.

The inquiry that the Opposition are calling for today could establish what we need to do in order to legislate to clean up the setting of the LIBOR rate. That could be dealt with and expedited, but when it comes to the underlying issues and the people involved, we are talking about criminal activity. Let us remember that, at a time when taxpayers’ money was being poured into the banking system to prop it up, these people were acting in their own personal interest and to profit Barclays and other banks, and against the interests of the country. In fact, it could even be called treason. These people belong behind bars, and the inquiry that needs to take place here—[ Interruption. ] Millionaires’ row over there are giggling at that, but I can tell them that the public out there do not think it is funny. We need to have a proper investigation, independent of this House, that will satisfy the public.

www.publications.parliament.uk...

If you plan on reading the debate it starts on the previous page. Some other good comments but of course they lost the vote, lets hope they dont lose their fight.

Another great comment this time from

John Thurso

On the first point, with regard to Barclays we have all the facts relating to LIBOR. The report is comprehensive, as most people who have read it would admit, and, along with the US Justice Department’s report, gives us the facts we need. There will be new facts to come when the FSA reports on other banks, an important matter to which I will return. The FSA report on Barclays shows two things: traders fiddled for their own gain before the crash; and Barclays as an institution low-balled after the crash in order to protect itself. Both behaviours are unethical, and when I asked Mr Diamond about that yesterday he said, “Yes, they are unethical.” As I understand it, arrests may have been made and further arrests can be anticipated, so the facts are clear. What we need to know now is what we should do about it.

Mr Roger Godsiff

..because as the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) have said, this issue goes way beyond fiddling the LIBOR rate. This is a much bigger issue, and it is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed.

but even if the most pious, puritanical person is put in charge of a den of inequity, they will eventually be corrupted.

Mr Michael Meacher

why are the Government so coy about a genuinely independent inquiry? Is it because of their fears over what a Leveson-style inquiry into banking might expose? After all, the City, which is a pretty hard-nosed institution, does not give half its total income to the Tory party year after year for nothing. It expects, and undoubtedly gets, a great deal in return. Is that why the scams that repeatedly tumble out of the City under the false pretence of financial innovation, such as the mis-selling of private pensions in the 1970s, which has not yet been mentioned, and the recent mis-selling of payment protection insurance and credit default swaps, have always been treated so lightly?

Why has the incestuous relationship between the credit rating agencies and those whose creditworthiness they are supposed to be assessing been left untouched by the Government, when it allowed junk derivatives to be sold around the world with a triple A rating? What is the answer to all these questions? I think that they are very significant. Why has the colossal scandal of tax avoidance on the industrial scale of £42 billion a year, in which the City is so intimately involved, been ignored so unscrupulously?

I shall give an example. The Government set up the Aaronson group to consider the issue, led by a lawyer who has always represented the tax avoidance industry and never Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. On the first page of its report last November, that group said that a general anti-avoidance rule was not necessary. It produced the preposterous proposal that if there were such a rule, HMRC would have to seek the permission of an external body before it could be used. It gets worse, because there would have to be a majority of tax avoidance industry representatives on that body. Not surprisingly, the Government have accepted those recommendations in full. That shows the inordinate lengths to which they will go to protect the City by appearing to do something but in reality elaborately constructing a paper aeroplane in the sure knowledge that it will not fly. Those are just some of the reasons, and I believe a lot more remain hidden, why the Government do not want a judge-led inquiry at any price.

But perhaps most telling, a reference to the power of the banks

Austin Mitchell

We have so far been silent on the real cause of these difficulties and manipulations. I refer to the problem of deregulation, which has made all this possible. The deregulation here—the big bang—was followed in the United States by the repeal of Glass-Steagall under Bill Clinton. That was the 1937 legislation that wisely enforced the separation of the utility, trading arms and the

5 July 2012 : Column 1155

merchant-banking, casino-gambling arms of the banks. It made distinct entities of them. After its repeal, banks here and there began to come together, with the trading arms subordinated to the gambling-casino, merchant-banking activities, and that set the tone and the ethics.

The result was the end of the old neighbourhood banking system of friendly bank managers in cupboards advising us on what to do with our money and providing money for mortgages and small businesses. All that went, and we had the spectacle of the kind of gambling made possible by all these inventive processes, such as the slicing and dicing, and parcelling out of debt, securitisation, derivative gambling—a form of gambling without gambling tax—sub-prime mortgages and now LIBOR manipulation.

All those practices were made possible by the new ethics of the merchant banks. A new greed entered banking, and the only ethic at the top was greed. If people such as merchant bankers have too much power, it follows that they will abuse it. It follows that if they have too much power, they have to be regulated. It was the repeal of regulation and the passion of both parties—the Tories were more passionately anti-regulation than we were, but we still deregulated too much—that created the opportunity for this to break out into the mess that it did.

Ok one more gem

Mr Russell Brown

The manner in which some of these banks have been operating is absolutely unbelievable. If I could not see it in writing myself or hear what constituents were saying, I would not have believed it, as there has been 100% hedging of some of the loans offered.

reply to post by BMorris


totally agree, any other person committing a crime of fraud / price fixing on a much lesser scale would be banged up and assets/possessions seized.
Wondering if the goverment (whom we all know are not on the side of the general public) will sacrifice Barclays bank staff to appease the anger of the public and look like they are actually doing something in order to not go after all the rest of the banks who were all in on it too.
Will be interesting to watch.

Has anyone wondered why the media, bless their little black hearts, never reports matters of banking as they truly are?

It's as if no one is supposed to ever realize or affirm publicly that there is one banking cartel; that they collude, conspire, and engage in all manner of misdeeds to secure their ever-growing hold on the global economic system.

Since it's inception, the "central" banking paradigm has manifested itself in the shadows; until we have reached this point, where without them public servants have no hope of serving, no business or enterprise survives that they wish marginalized, or destroyed.., and their continuous full-bodied push to eradicate the sovereignty of the self-governed as a meaningful 'externality' to their stream of wealth.

Are we really shocked that they have been the casino owners since they invented institutionalized corporate gambling? Can we truly be surprised that the wealth of nations is at the disposal of bankers to "loan" to other nation's banks? Of course they are all one bank in the final analysis. Of course they own and dictate the actuarial tables that rule the policy-makers. They determine what we have 'seen' and 'heard' about them, and their dealings with our governments are more closely guarded than any military secret.

In the final analysis you will find "no admission of guilt" and "systemic errors" and perhaps even as some have stated ...the tired old scam... "a few bad apples" to serve as a repository for the anger of those whose outrage cannot be quenched with media glitz and talking head wisdom.

reply to post by CrimsonMoon


The one major important point we may be missing here is that the USA banks may be involved too..

If so, then the investigation is going to cross many borders and touch upon many a sore point in the banking system.
I'll grab the video from one of the threads that I've listed above so you can see how the US is reporting on this, for those who have not seen it.


A lot of us are going to sit back and watch the show of the banks being ripped apart (hopefully), others may try to help in the ripping in one form or another..

Either way, the scum has got to be cleaned up...

reply to post by Maxmars


Indeed, Marcus Agius is on the board of the bbc, historically we have seen spies like Baroness park leading it, the current head is a Knight of Malta it seems if this is even relevant. John Scarlett News International etc etc
I suspect there are many more on the payroll that arent even so obvious, I reckon the banks etc own the secret services, they certainly have no issues killing on their behalf. BP being a fine example, all this Africa conflict seems to have simply opened markets for Sach's et al.
The media are owned. The public actually needs to start funding their own news, that way the media wouldnt need advertising revenue etc to pay their staff. As an editor you are hardly going to write a scathing article about banks/big business when they have paid for a 2 page spread, otherwise they just wont in future and you go under, never mind the editors which are theirs anyway.

The fathers of central banking/privatisation the Rothschild family ran their own intelligence network which outplayed the British gov to profit from victory over Napoleon, it could be considered that Reuters is part of their modern network, dont they also own associated press? IE 90% of world news.
There should also be a ban on hiring next gen family members into the secret services, like Bush etc, its easy to see how they keep their grip due to oversights lke that, I suspect George W Bush is rather senior management in the CIA, appointed by his father, a former head, with clearance that makes them untouchable to most, majestic 12 type stuff.
Clinton may be the only one of the last 4 who was not CIA, then again his connections to coc aine smuggling via his brother suggest that maybe he was. All this stuff about Obama suggests he is too, Kenya being a cover.

I read once they call the CIA the company because Wall Street funded it in the 50s I dont know how true this is but it wouldnt surprise me if corrupt management went out and sold their national duty off for $$$$

Even if this is not true we have to accept that the secret services are not all about battling 1 eyed balding villains with mountain bases, rather they have the public duped it is about national interests, eg get that contract/stop that damaging revelation, the banks have proved they are anti nationalism, we should withdraw our support and call for an audit of the security services as well. No stone unturned indeed. In the UK our most pressing concern should be getting some kind of protection in place for whistle blowers, I suspect the US too

If they have a "Serious Fraud Office" do they also have a "Not So Serious Fraud Office"?

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I know this is an important topic - but nothing significant will be accomplished until we have a new system - if the old machinery that has supported the corrupt system for decades/centuries is supposedly "investigating" this, it actually worries me as to their real agenda.

Originally posted by PlanetXisHERE
nothing significant will be accomplished until we have a new system - if the old machinery that has supported the corrupt system for decades/centuries is supposedly "investigating" this, it actually worries me as to their real agenda.

Which could be a prophetic statement seeing as this has just happened;
RBS 'Glitch' Goes Airborne As Biggest Russian Bank Halts All Credit, Debit Card Operations

Why has this "glitch" appeared elsewhere, if it is infact a glitch..
It could be the banks setting their systems up for a deliberate collapse and/or to hide all that is wrong..

reply to post by PlanetXisHERE


Same as always, protect the City, that square mile of independant offshore Roman state which has resisted amalgamation into the UK many times, the last being the late 1800s. As always the Lords, mostly the hereditary ones will prevent anything being done by no doubt killing off legislation until it is watered down enough, this of course relies on an effective investigation in the first place, which we are not at this stage going to see. By the way i say mostly hereditary, there have been some real crackers appointed recently.

As you can see from my first comment, the Tory benches actually found it funny when the words criminal offences and treason were mentioned. The public are indeed not laughing with them. A very large number of these MPs are former finance people themselves of course, they probably still own shares in some cases. Would be interesting to look at board memberships as an indicator of likeliness of supporting reform

Originally posted by Extralien


Why has this "glitch" appeared elsewhere, if it is infact a glitch..
It could be the banks setting their systems up for a deliberate collapse and/or to hide all that is wrong..

This seems more likely.........

Originally posted by trustnothing

Same as always, protect the City, that square mile of independant offshore Roman state which has resisted amalgamation into the UK many times, the last being the late 1800s.

It is sad how so many don't understand the significance or even existence of this.

As you can see from my first comment, the Tory benches actually found it funny when the words criminal offences and treason were mentioned. The public are indeed not laughing with them. A very large number of these MPs are former finance people, themselves of course they probably still own shares in some cases. Would be interesting to look at board memberships as an indicator of likeliness of supporting reform

Many don't realize it, but their hereditary perks and rule is quickly coming to an end..........and I can promise you they won't be laughing then.

We could have some real fun making lists of MPs that should resign

The first 3 noes were Tories, so hardly surpising there, I like the Tories in the sense they dont pretent to be anything but elitist scum. Keeps it simple.

Number 4 a prominent Lib Dem
Alexander, rh Danny

Bank lobbying

It was reported in the Independent in December 2011 that Danny Alexander had been involved in meetings[34] with bankers lobbying to avoid proposals in the Vickers Report[35] that were intended to reduce risks in the banking industry. The talks were alleged to be secret, but were obtained via a Freedom of Information request.

en.wikipedia.org...

O dear, looks like his position may be untenable shortly...

The list of what each MP voted is here
www.publications.parliament.uk...

Has your MP voted against a public inquiry? Doesnt look like mine made it along yesterday.

I wish all of our dear friends in the UK the greatest possible success.

Our battle against institutionalized abuse of confidence and what can only be described as international racketeering is dependent on the people of all nations embroiled in the "central" banking cartel to be vigilant, diligent, and persistently confrontational when the 'authority" talking heads insist that "all is well" and "we can trust them."

... because when they insist we can trust them... they mean us to infer that they themselves are not "them" but "us".... and only a fool would believe such a thing after the centuries of exploitation that have rendered most of our collective national wealth - into "their" property...

[remainder removed because it's too depressing to convey]

Originally posted by Maxmars

[remainder removed because it's too depressing to convey]

I know..

We all know..

We have all felt the same, and still do. Our parents must suffer the most if they are awake.. knowing that they brought in children to a world of corruption and lies. Our parents tried to raise us in the best possible way, filling our heads with positive thoughts, ideas and fantastic dreams... only for it all to be shattered by a broken system.

It's kinda like discovering the truth on your first christmas day..

We all share these pains together. Perhaps that these bankers are the result of broken childhoods.. heartless, uncaring, materialistic and greedy pigs wallowing in the displeasure of a blinded society.

But through the clouds shine rays of hope.. hope that there is someone in the SFO that can see through the grit and grime and make good of bad rubbish.
Bring on the crimes, bring on the players and bring on their judgement.
May it be swift, sure and decisive.

BBC news TV now;
Danny Alexander MP says he wants SFO to follow the trail of evidence to wherever it goes and willgive full support and provide anything they need to get to the bottom of all this..

ALL UK banks may be involved..

Prosecutions possible...

Originally posted by BMorris
If I were in charge as a dictator, any bank found guilty of this would find:

* Its entire executive board jailed,
* The executive board members homes/yachts/cars/bank accounts confiscated under the "proceeds of crime" law.
* The executive board members banned from ever working in the financial industry after their jail term.
* The bank itself will be nationalised, permanently, as they can't be trusted to play fair.

However, Im not in charge. What will happen is they will recieve fines that when compared to how much their crime earned them, are tiny. Then they are told they are bad boys and girls, and are not to do it again. Hardly a deterrent, iis it?

You summed it up correctly: