Former Barclays bankers charged over Libor allegations

Former Barclays bankers charged over Libor allegations
The three men are the first former or existing Barclays staff named in criminal proceedings linked to interest rate fixing allegations

Three former Barclays bankers have been charged in relation to allegations of a conspiracy to manipulate Libor interest rates.

The Serious Fraud Office said the men were charged in connection with an allegation of conspiracy to defraud between 1 June 2005 and 31 August 2007.

The bank was fined £290m by US and UK regulators two years ago for a "serious, widespread" role in trying to manipulate Libor rates. There was no admission of criminal liability but the scandal ultimately led to the departure of the chief executive, Bob Diamond.

Although Barclays was the first of several banks to reach a regulatory settlement of Libor allegations, neither existing nor former employees had been named in criminal proceedings until Monday.

The focus of criminal proceedings until now has been a former Citigroup and UBS trader, Tom Hayes, who is charged with conspiracy to fix Libor with employees at eight other financial firms including Royal Bank of Scotland, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Icap, Tullett Prebon, Rabobank RP Martin and HSBC.

It is thought that the latest charges brought against former Barclays staff relate to a separate alleged conspiracy, unrelated to the alleged plots between August 2006 and September 2010 involving Hayes.

The three former Barclays bankers are Jonathan Mathew, who worked in the bank's treasury unit in London and left this position in September 2012, Peter Johnson, who is thought to have been a senior dollar Libor submitter in London, and Stylianos Contogoulas, a former trader at Barclays who moved to Merrill Lynch in July 2006 and left there in September 2011.

Barclays declined to comment.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/17/former-barclays-employees-charged-libor-allegations-interest-rate-fixing

They should all have been charged for all occasions, not just this particular one.

This is not confined to Barclays though I am told I have to start a new thread if I wish to mention another name. Libor manipulation post crash was I believe endemic.

This includes RBS Lloyds etc. There I mentioned them

Any banker in any bank involved in manipulating the libor rates should be charged. Especially the people at the top who probably gave the orders. It's no good charging the people at the bottom and letting the instigators walk free.

My point is all banks probably did it as the inter bank short lending funds dried up as they panicked about the toxicity of sub prime debt and banks exposure to it.

It is very probable that the government regulators knew it was going on never mind just the bankers. Moreover it was not necessarily a bad thing if it kept the banks afloat which is why I think the regulators knew.

This goes to the very top. The sub prime scam was an overblown Ponzi scheme. The bankers were as stupid as they were greedy Libor manipulation was the least of the crimes if you look deeper.

But the libor rates are the one that have the most effect on the general population and who knows how many mortgages etc were effected and how much money that cost mortgagees. It was fraud when all is said and done and why the hell should they get away with it.

They manipulated down not up to keep short term cost down. It didn't affect the general population adversely as I understand it.

You are missing a key point of what I am saying the government regulators were complicit they were worried many more banks may go under. I remember Geoff Randall discussing this on Sky some time ago it was most interesting.

The rate banks pay to raise money affects how much they charge on loans and mortgages. An increase in Libor can add hundreds of pounds to households’ annual mortgage repayments or a loan to a small business.

This was seen with dramatic effect in the run up to the financial crisis, when Libor soared and lenders raised their rates. It is also used as the benchmark for trillions of pounds in complex financial investments.

The three-month sterling Libor rate - the key rate for the UK - should be just 10 or 20 basis points higher than the bank rate in normal conditions. Pre-credit crunch, if the bank rate or base rate was 2 per cent, Libor would be 2.1 per cent or 2.2 per cent. But it soared far higher in August 2007, marking the start of the credit crunch.

It also influences savings rates. If banks can borrow more cheaply from each other then they don't need to offer such good returns to savers.

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2165889/Barclays-scandal-How-Libor-affects-mortgages-savings-rates--customer-compensation-likely.html#ixzz2tcE18BES
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It might have done anyway, but with what was going on, who knows what it actually should have been.

The point is and I repeat it again they cheated by under reporting rates not raising them, Therefore we were not affected it. Clearly my other points don't matter because you wish to ignore them I'm getting used to that.

They also raised them before the financial crisis, considerably.

Never mind.

You didn't realise they were cheating when they raised them as well? They wanted to make the banks looks more stable than they were.

Sassy wrote:You didn't realise they were cheating when they raised them as well?   They wanted to make the banks looks more stable than they were.

To manipulate rates is cheating on a grand scale and in the banking industry of old would have been unthinkable.
If you really want corrupt banking then you need to understand the principles behind the sub prime scam. That was the ultimate Ponzi scheme that was sold to greedy bankers. Guess where it originated the same place as the Ponzi scheme.

Greedy bankers shafted greedy bankers priceless; except it wasn't decent people who had their money invested in banks had there whol lives put at risk.

Libor manipulations are handbags at dawn versus genocide in comparison.

Of course you may think otherwise.