Two International Bank Managers Charged in Libor Interest Rate Manipulation Scheme

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-international-bank-managers-charged-libor-interest-rate-manipulation-scheme

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 24, 2017

Two International Bank Managers Charged in Libor Interest Rate Manipulation Scheme

Two French bank managers were indicted today for participating in a scheme to transmit false and misleading information related to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), a global benchmark interest rate to which trillions of dollars of financial transactions are tied.
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Danielle Sindzingre, 54, and Muriel Bescond, 49, both of France, were charged in the Eastern District of New York with one count of conspiring to transmit false reports concerning market information that tends to affect a commodity and four counts of transmitting such false reports. Sindzingre and Bescond were, respectively, the Global Head of Treasury and the Head Treasury Paris at French financial institution Société Générale, S.A.

According to the indictment, LIBOR was a benchmark interest rate that was calculated for various currencies and maturities. The U.S. Dollar LIBOR was constructed by compiling submissions from leading banks around the world (“contributor panel banks”), excluding the four highest and lowest submissions, and averaging the remainder to obtain each day’s LIBOR “fix.” Each contributor panel bank was required under the rules of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) to submit the rate at which it believed it would be charged if it sought offers to borrow money from other banks in the London interbank market. LIBOR was used to price futures contracts, interest rate swaps and other financial products worldwide. It was also used to calculate some consumer interest rates, including certain home mortgage and credit card interest rates. In February 2009, Société Générale joined the contributor panel for U.S. Dollar LIBOR.

As alleged in the indictment, between approximately May 2010 and approximately October 2011, Sindzingre and Bescond knowingly instructed their subordinate employees at Société Générale’s Paris treasury desk to submit inaccurately low LIBOR contributions in an effort to make it appear that Société Générale was able to borrow money at more favorable rates than it actually was. This was allegedly done with knowledge that the true rates at which Société Générale was borrowing money were higher than the rates it was submitting as part of the LIBOR calculation. On numerous occasions, the false information submitted at the direction of Sindzingre and Bescond altered the day’s final U.S. Dollar LIBOR calculation, thus affecting all financial transactions tied to U.S. Dollar LIBOR on that day, the indictment alleges. Among the allegedly affected financial products were Eurodollar futures, a commodity that was traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In total, it is estimated that the defendants’ misconduct caused over $170 million in harm to the global financial markets, according to the indictment.
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[SWBTATTReg]

1. and if you had a mortgage based on LIBOR (I did), what will you get? ZIP/zero!!

thanks for posting...