Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Libor Leniency

It was the biggest banking theft and scandal in history whereby the banks rigged interest rates and skimmed trillions for years, and now that it has dispatched down the memory hole....

"Sentence reduced in Libor rigging case" by Liam Vaughan and Suzi Ring Bloomberg News  December 21, 2015

NEW YORK — Tom Hayes, a former derivatives trader dubbed “Rain Man” by former colleagues, had his jail sentence for rigging Libor, a key global exchange rate, cut to 11 years after judges said his punishment was too harsh.

A panel of three of the United Kingdom’s most senior judges reduced the 14-year sentence, one of the country’s longest for a nonviolent criminal, following a two-day hearing. The court upheld Hayes’s conviction for conspiracy to defraud.

British JU$TUS!

“We are of the view that taking into account all the circumstances — in particular his age, his non-managerial position in the two banks [UBS Group and Citigroup], and his mild Asperger’s condition — that the overall sentence was longer than was necessary to punish the appellant and to deter others,” the judges said in a written statement. 

Is there no level to which $cum bankers won't stoop?

Hayes was the first individual to face trial for rigging the London interbank offered rate since investigators started probing the benchmark seven years ago. He was accused of masterminding an elaborate four-year campaign to rig the yen variant of Libor that involved more than 20 individuals at half a dozen firms in three countries.

Socially awkward, but highly gifted, Hayes became the public face of a scandal that tarnished the banking industry. A dozen banks and brokerages have been fined about $9 billion for the activities and similar abuses by regulators around the world.

Hayes’s nickname was based on the 1988 Dustin Hoffman movie “Rain Man,’’ about an autistic savant....

Yeah, all these looters are somehow mentally-challenged.

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I'm wonder how he got the job if he was, you know.

UPDATES: 

5 acquitted of charges they helped rig Libor

Sixth broker is acquitted in Libor case