Saturday 23 May 2015

Why putting bank bosses behind bars is still nigh on impossible | Business | The Guardian

Why putting bank bosses behind bars is still nigh on impossible | Business | The Guardian:



"US attorney general Loretta Lynch declared last week that five major banks had engaged in “brazenly illegal behaviour” on a “near-daily basis” in rigging foreign exchange markets. But no sooner had she imposed record £2.6bn fines on the banks and extracted guilty pleas from four of them – including Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays – than she was facing questions about why no charges were brought against individuals.



This is a familiar refrain ever since the 2008 banking crisis led to multibillion-pound bailouts. Some bankers have ended up behind bars: Iceland currently has four former bank bosses in jail, while in the US a few junior bankers have been convicted. Ireland convicted two former executives of Anglo Irish Bank, but did not jail them.



However, to many, the list seems short when compared with the $235bn of fines that Reuters calculates have been imposed on 20 major banks in the past seven years for market rigging, sanctions busting, money laundering and mis-selling mortgage bonds in the runup to the 2008 crisis."



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