‘Barclays scandal, tip of iceberg’

Speaking at the House of Commons Treasury Committee, the Bank of England’s deputy governor, Paul Tucker told British MPs that greedy bankers may have been rigging the figures across dozens of other markets as well as the “cesspit” of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), reported The Sun.

The manipulation of Libor, a measure of how much banks charge each other for loans, cost Barclays record fines of £290 million. This was followed by the resignation of three top executives, Marcus Agius, the chairman of Barclays, Robert Diamond, Barclays Chief Executive Officer, and Jerry del Missier, Chief Operating Officer and a top deputy to Diamond.

Speaking to a British parliamentary committee on Wednesday 4 July, Diamond said Barclays had raised concerns on several occasions with American and British authorities about discrepancies over how Libor was set. However, the lender was not told to stop the practice.

On Thursday 5 July, British Chancellor George Osborne accused his shadow counterpart Ed Balls of involvement in the scandal suggesting that he had known about Barclays’ manipulation of Libor.

However, Tucker gave Labour a significant boost after he told British lawmakers that there was “absolutely not” any pressure from ex-ministers or mandarins on him to persuade banks to fix their Libor lending rates.

Warning against corruption within Britain’s financial system, Tucker also called on the British government to widen a Financial Services Authority investigation to look into all other unregulated deals.

ISH/HE

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