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23. Why Was Libor Rate Rigging Committed Over the Bloomberg Terminal By Pam Martens

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/12/why-was-libor-rate-rigging-committed-over-the-bloomberg-terminal/

It is close to five years since the Commodity Futures Trading Commission referred the Libor rate rigging matter to the U.S. Department of Justice. Yesterday (DECEMBER 19, 2012) was the first time the Justice Department brought a criminal charge in the matter – not against a U.S. bank where it would have a smoother road to prosecution, but against a Japanese subsidiary of the Swiss banking giant, UBS, and two of its former traders, Tom Hayes and Roger Darin.

The UBS subsidiary has received a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning it won’t be criminally prosecuted if it abides by the terms of the agreement, which includes not disputing the charges and continued cooperation. UBS paid global fines of $1.5 billion in the matter with the bulk of that money going to the U.S. Department of Justice. Hayes and Darin have been criminally charged in a complaint filed December 12, 2012 in Federal court in Manhattan. The complaint was unsealed yesterday.

What the complaint makes clear is that it should not have taken five years to bring these charges. The traders effectively handed the Justice Department a slam dunk case by documenting each maneuver to rig the international interest rate benchmark known as Libor via instant messages recorded on a Bloomberg computer terminal. There were thousands of these messages over at least a five year period. Three questions arise: did Wall Street engage in a legal battle to prevent the release of these communications on the basis of trade secrets or proprietary/confidential trading communications; did the Bloomberg business empire, owned by Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City, immediately turn over the instant messages when requested to do so; why did traders feel their criminal messages would be protected on a Bloomberg computer terminal?

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