Okay, so the Associated Press (AP) just reported that "Barclays and its subsidiaries have agreed to pay more than $450 million to settle charges that it tried to manipulate key global interest rates."
That might seem like a lot of money, but remember that this is basically the shareholders of the bank footing the bill for criminal actions of the bank officers. According to the AP:
- The rates affect the costs of hundreds of trillions of dollars in loans and investments such as bonds, auto loans and derivatives.
- The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Wednesday that the incidents occurred between 2005 and 2009 and sometimes took place daily.
- The CFTC said Barclays senior management and multiple traders were involved and that they coordinated with traders at other banks to make false submissions.
Wow, that's some pretty hefty manipulation of international rates: "trillions of dollars."
But will anyone go to jail for this even though "Barclays also agreed to pay $160 million as part of an agreement with the fraud section of the Justice Department's criminal unit on a related matter"? That means it was a prosecutable crime, but the Department of Justice let Barclays off with a fine and held no individuals criminally responsible for premeditated fraud that ripped off perhaps millions of people engaged in financial transactions.
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