Investigating and prosecuting Libor culprits

Global Fraud Focus: Examining cross-border issues

The global financial crisis revealed bad policies, practices and pitfalls along with outright criminality in global banks. Far-reaching internal and external investigations are finding culprits who unlawfully manipulated the London Interbank Offering Rate (Libor) — one of the cornerstones of market balance.

We discussed the Libor scandal in an earlier Global Fraud Focus column. (See Bankers without ethics, Fraud Magazine May/June 2013) Since then, both the U.K. Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have been very busy.

An SFO release reported a senior banker (whose identity is protected by a court order) from a leading British bank pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court on Oct. 3, 2014, to conspiracy to defraud in connection with manipulating the Libor. This is the first criminal conviction resulting from SFO investigations into Libor manipulation.