UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Thursday 20 December 2012

UBS corrupt payments exposed as bank pays £940m to settle Libor claims

From drug money laundering to fixing interest rates - crashing the economy and causing mass unemployment... yet NO ONE goes to prison. The fabric of our society is completely corrupted by banks, bankers and debt based money.

The Swiss bank UBS has been fined £940m (1.4bn Swiss francs, US$1.53bn) by global regulators for "extensive and widespread" attempts to manipulate key benchmark interest rates known as Libor for five years. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...-fixing-claims

The UBS fine exposes the full scale of the attempts to manipulate the two rates – London interbank offered rate (Libor) and the Euro interbank offered rate (Euribor).

In its report, the FSA said it had found a UBS trader agreeing with a counterpart that he would attempt to manipulate UBS's submissions in "small drops" in order to avoid arousing suspicion. The trader made it clear that he hoped to profit from the manipulation and referred explicitly to his UBS trading positions and the impact of the Japanese Libor rate on those positions.

He offered to "return the favour" and entered into illicit transactions in order to incentivize and reward his counterparts.

For example, on 18 September 2008 a trader explained to a broker: "If you keep 6s [ie, the six-month Japanese yen Libor rate] unchanged today ... I will fu***** do one humongous deal with you ... Like a 50,000 buck deal, whatever ... I need you to keep it as low as possible ... if you do that .... I'll pay you, you know, 50,000 dollars, 100,000 dollars... whatever you want ... I'm a man of my word."

Illicit fees of more than £170,000 were generated for the broker.

Is there never an end to this rubbish? No.. the next in line for a fine from the FSA is RBS.. watch this space.