Rigging of Libor was ‘state-led’
A co-ordinated drive by national central banks and governments pressed banks to manipulate the Libor and Euribor benchmark interest rates at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, an exposé to be published next week alleges.
This was at the same time as dozens of former traders were criminally prosecuted for much less serious rate “manipulation”, it is claimed.
A new book, exclusively serialised in The Times, claims that investigating agencies, including the FBI in the United States and Britain’s financial regulator, were told in November 2010 of an international drive to get Libor and Euribor rates down, regardless of the real cost of borrowing cash.
Jurors in nine criminal trials for far smaller-scale interest rate “rigging” in London and New York between 2015
