Banking Scandals as a Mirror to the Struggle for World Domination
By Valentin Katasonov
Global Research
August 13, 2013
Global banks: a continuous series of scandals
Despite some stabilisation in the financial markets by the time the first wave of the crisis had come to an end (2007-2009), global banks are still not leading a quiet life. Since the beginning of the current decade, we have seen a continuous series of scandals surrounding the banks that make up the core of the global financial system. Violations and even crimes committed by banks at different times are being uncovered, financial regulators are carrying out official investigations into the activities of banks and there have also been legal proceedings. Banks are being forced to pay out enormous amounts in fines, and the circle of banks being pulled into the epicentre of the scandals is growing continuously.
It all started with the Swiss bank UBS, which the US authorities accused of concealing the assets of American taxpayers. In 2010, UBS collapsed after disclosing information about its American clients and transferring hundreds of millions of dollars to the US Treasury. After this, America set about disembowelling other banks in Switzerland. And then banks in other countries. They subjected them to fines, destroyed the concept of banking secrecy and virtually forced foreign banks to inform on their clients.
Then a series of scandals began related to the exposure of Iranian, Cuban and North Korean sanctions violations by world calibre banks. Giants of the City of London – Barclays, HSBC, The Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered – as well as banks in other European countries ended up on the list of those accused. Many of these banks were being accused of money laundering, collaborating with the drug mafia and even financing terrorism all at the same time. The accusations came from financial regulators in the US and Great Britain. It all ended with the banks paying enormous fines amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars per bank. The largest fine was paid by HSBC in 2012 and amounted to US$ 1.9 billion.
In the middle of summer 2012, a scandal began related to the Libor rate. The largest banks (predominantly European) were accused of manipulating rates in the London interbank lending market. The impact of these manipulations was huge, since financial markets amounting to hundreds of trillions of dollars are all guided by the Libor rate. In fact, the point at issue was that more than a dozen banks of world calibre had formed a cartel earning billions of dollars by manipulating the Libor rate with the unspoken agreement of central banks and financial regulators. In May of this year it came to light that a number of banks had manipulated another rate, known as ISDAfix, which the US $379 trillion derivatives market is guided by. An investigation has begun which is threatening to turn into a scandal of the same magnitude as the Libor affair.
The Rest…HERE
