Interest rate ‘rigging’ evidence ‘covered up’ by banks

According to documents, lenders responded to pressure from central banks by drastically lowering their estimates of interest rates.

UK and US controllers were recounted a state-drove drive to “rig” loan fees in the 2008 monetary emergency, however concealed it, proof demonstrates.

When bankers were sentenced to prison for “rigging” of interest rates on a smaller scale, no evidence was presented to juries.

Controllers said they had kept exposure guidelines, declined to remark or in one case refuted the cases.

There has previously been some evidence of involvement in interest rate manipulation by the UK government and the Bank of England. However, the evidence that it was part of a larger international effort to lower key interest rates in October 2008 by central banks in the West and the UK has never been published.

The evidence suggests that in October 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bank of England, the Banque de France, the European Central Bank, the Banca d’Italia, the Banco de Espana, and the European Central Bank all made significant interventions in the Libor and Euribor markets.

At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, when bank lending was nearly at an all-time low, central banks all over the world advised calm. However, my investigation reveals evidence that, behind the scenes, they were manipulating the situation to artificially restore calm, which would later be deemed illegal in the United Kingdom.

The Libor and Euribor measures, which track how much it costs banks to borrow money from one another, are related to benchmark interest rates. As a result, they have a significant impact on how much mortgages and other loans cost. The rate was lower the more investors trusted the borrowing bank. The market had more doubts about that bank’s viability the higher the rate.

In October 2008, at a time when banks were about to stop lending, there was a global effort by the central banks of the UK, the US, and the eurozone to lower Libor and bring market calm back.

In November 2010, exploring organizations from the US Government Agency of Examination (FBI) to the UK monetary controller were straightforwardly educated regarding this – yet they have since kept it mysterious from Parliament, Congress and people in general.

According to the BBC, Andrew Tyrie, who presided over the UK Treasury Committee of MPs’ inquiry into Libor in 2012, believes that Parliament “appears to have been misled.”

“The evidence Mr. Verity has uncovered strongly suggests that the committee’s investigation into the Libor scandal was not told the whole truth.”

“The public trusts Parliament to discover the truth.” This case shows why Parliament should use its information-gathering powers more effectively to punish people who don’t give the whole story. In the event that this is the case, Parliament should not rest on its laurels.”

I uncovered extricates from the record of a meeting given by Barclays cash dealer Peter Johnson while exploring a book I have expounded on the mysterious history of the financing cost fixing outrage.

On November 19, 2010, the interview was given to the FBI, other US regulators, the US Department of Justice, and the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK.

Jurors in nine criminal trials for much smaller-scale interest rate “rigging” held in London and New York between 2015 and 2019 were never shown this evidence, despite the fact that 37 traders and brokers have been prosecuted by the US Department of Justice and the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.

The suppressed evidence, which is supported and expanded by data that has been made public, indicates that in October 2008, large-scale central bank intervention occurred in the context of Libor and Euribor.

Further suppressed evidence suggests that the UK government, including 10 Downing Street, pressured banks to “manipulate” Libor, as defined by the criminal courts, which means attempting to influence the benchmark rate’s movements while “disregarding the proper basis for setting Libor.”

Nineteen merchants have been indicted and nine imprisoned in light of court decisions that prohibited any impact on Libor separated from the loan fees on offer on the currency markets at which a bank could get and loan cash.

In the event that they permitted its setting to be impacted by different elements, for example, the longing to keep away from terrible exposure or to help a bank’s market exchanges, they could be imprisoned for loan cost “control”.

Call for fresh investigation

Senior Conservative Member of Parliament David Davis stated: I have serious concerns that state agencies may have misled the Treasury Select Committee regarding the state’s knowledge of and involvement in the setting of false rates. There are hundreds of pages of evidence to support this huge and intricate problem.”

“A case to believe that state agencies coerced individuals into perjury that led to false convictions,” Mr. Davis stated in light of the evidence he had seen.

Mr Davis added he would request that the Met Police examine likely prevarication, yet additionally required the Depository Select Panel to research his anxiety that Parliament might have been misdirected.

A 2010 recording of FBI investigator Mike Kelly interviewing Peter Johnson, who submitted Barclays bank’s Libor rates, is one piece of evidence that points to a cover-up.

Under pressure from the Bank of England and the UK government, Mr. Johnson claimed that in October 2008, he was instructed by his supervisors to submit artificially low Libor rates, which were significantly lower than the market’s actual interest rates.

Mr. Johnson was questioned by Mr. Kelly in the recording: Did you have any idea why Barclays was being put under such pressure?

Mr. Johnson responded, “I’m not sure that it was being put just on Barclays.”

“OK? Who else, do you believe, was under pressure?

“We comprehended that the French banks had been told to get their rates down[…]”

“What element was constraining them?”

“We accept it was the Banque du France.”

Record rate falls

That information is supported by the published data on Euribor submissions from that time, and regulators have never mentioned it to Congress or Parliament.

They show that following a co-ordinated cut in true rates by six national banks on 8 October 2008, there were likewise record falls in banks’ evaluations of the expense of getting euros by French banks – moves just logical as having been co-ordinated at a public level.

Market factors could not explain the record moves because the vast majority of the other forty banks whose Euribor submissions were monitored maintained constant rates.

BNP Paribas slashed its Euribor rates by 0.4% in a single day on October 8 and 9, which was larger than the 0.35 percent cut that occurred following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In the currency markets, Euribor entries seldom move by over 0.1% each day.

Other banks took unprecedented actions over the next three business days:

• Credit Agricole, a French bank, decreased its Euribor estimates of the cost of borrowing euros over three months by 0.38
• percent. Societe Generale, a French bank, decreased its estimates by 0.42 percent.
• Credit Industriel et Commercial, a French division of HSBC, decreased by 0.48 percent.
• Intesa Sanpaolo, an Italian bank, decreased its estimates by 0.1% per day for three days.

During the weekend of October 11-12, 2008, Gordon Brown, the then-prime minister of the UK, flew to Paris for an emergency summit with European leaders, including Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank at the time, who all issued statements urging “co-ordinated” action to address the crisis.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena caught up after the weekend summit, lowering its rates by an unprecedented 0.4 percent in a single day. Spain experienced similar record declines.

Additionally, Mr. Johnson informed investigators of a JPMorgan Chase offer in the dollar Libor market in New York at a price below market in late October 2008.

Talking with him in November 2010, the US controller affirmed it had seen information that Pursuit New York had proposed to loan at 4.68% – while placing in a Libor gauge of the expense of getting dollars that was a lot of lower – at 3.25%.

Mr Johnson said he trusted the proposal to loan at a rate still far beneath the market, mid-emergency, when different moneylenders were declining to loan any money, was finished at the encouraging of the Central Bank of New York.

“Are there rumors that Chase was involved at the time?” inquired Anne Termine, an investigator for the Commodity Future Trading Commission, a US regulator.

“Indeed,” Mr Johnson answered.

“What were they?”

That it had been asked by the Fed to lend money to the market.

Be that as it may, the US specialists seem not to have researched the US national bank’s reputed mediation in their last notification for Barclays. Mr Johnson was posed no further inquiries and the Division of Equity’s last notification fining banks for Libor control made no notice of any US national bank mediation.

Absolutely no part of this proof was disclosed in press notification and proclamations of reality distributed by controllers as they arraigned 37 merchants and fined banks $8.8bn for gear Libor and Euribor. The jurors were not informed of it.

The Treasury stated that it did not intend to influence the Libor submissions of individual banks.

The Monetary Lead Authority told the BBC it had met its exposure commitments.

The allegations have previously been described as “unsubstantiated” by the Bank of England.

The CFTC and the FBI did not respond.

The assertions, according to the European Central Bank (ECB), “misrepresent the role of a central bank in the implementation of monetary policy,” were “strongly rebutted” by the institution without providing further details. The Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo asserted that it had always acted independently and in full compliance with the rate-setting rules. Additionally, they stated that the ECB had always acted in accordance with its mandate and in full compliance with applicable law.