Banks Face Civil Lawsuit Over Rigging Currency Markets — Era of Light – Aug 1, 2019

Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS are facing a £1 billion ($1.23 billion) class action lawsuit over rigging the foreign exchange markets — one of the biggest cases of its kind in the UK.

It comes just months after European regulators hit many of the same banks with a €1 billion-plus penalty for manipulation of these same markets between 2007 and 2013.  ➤➤

Read more via Banks Face Civil Lawsuit Over Rigging Currency Markets — Era of Light

In Just One Decade, Corporations Destroyed 50 Million Hectares of Forest—An Area the Size of Spain — Waking Times – July 25, 2019

Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
Waking Times

Major corporations involved with commodities like beef, palm oil, and soya pledged in 2010 to end deforestation over the next decade—but instead of fulfilling that promise, a new Greenpeace International analysis found the companies are set to destroy at least 50 million hectares of forest worldwide by 2020.

Read more via In Just One Decade, Corporations Destroyed 50 Million Hectares of Forest—An Area the Size of Spain — Waking Times

A secret recording reportedly implicates the Bank of England in LIBOR fixing – April 12, 2017

 Lianna Brinded 10 Apr 2017

Former Barclays employee Peter Johnson in 2014. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison in July 2016.

A secret recording of two former Barclays bankers allegedly puts Britain’s central bank in the middle of the LIBOR fixing scandal that rocked the country, says the BBC.

In the recording from 2008, one banker claims that the Bank of England pressured huge commercial banks to keep LIBOR rates low.

LIBOR – or the London interbank offered rate – is the daily measure showing the rate at which banks will lend to each other. It is used to set the price of hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of financial products.

The rate was rigged by traders from numerous banks, who agreed amongst themselves to submit rates that were either higher or lower than the rate should actually have been. It allowed them to make more money on trades.

Since the scandal first came to the public’s attention in 2012, the Bank of England has consistently said it did not know until much later about LIBOR rigging and of the practice of low-balling, as the submission of inaccurate Libor rates was called.

However, the recording from 2008 uncovered by BC Panorama appears to contradict the BoE’s claim. The transcript of the secret recording between a senior Barclays manager, Mark Dearlove, and LIBOR submitter Peter Johnson states that Barclays had “some very serious pressure from the UK government and the Bank of England about pushing our Libors lower.”

Here is a key part from the recording, as detailed by the BBC:

Read more at: Nordic Buisness Insider