Barclays bank, the real indoor pirates
March 28th, 2009More from the Times
Then we have this further perspective from Richard Murphy
I’ll tell you what I think is going on with Barclays. In my opinion it has constructed a series of wholly almost entirely artificial transactions undertaken through a significant number of separate legal entities, most under the control of Barclays itself, but some, inevitably, owned, or controlled (and in these deals it is always difficult to define what that might mean, deliberately) by the counterparty to the transaction – in most cases banks such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Fortis and so on.
The result has been a deliberate attempt to defraud – by which term I mean seeking to secure a financial advantage by deception, although not (I stress) illegally.
The deception has been on three parties. The first has been tax authorities who despite their brave statements to the contrary did not, I suspect, know the full details of some of these arrangements. It would seem that some may not have been disclosed to them.
Secondly, Barclays have sought to defraud (using the above definition) the taxpayers of the UK and maybe elsewhere who have not received the funds rightfully due to them on profits declared.
Thirdly, I think they have defrauded (using the above definition) their shareholders by declaring profits which were not, in my opinion, sustainable and which were manufactured through preconceived and structured financing deals in which the counterparties played a remarkably small part in exchange for what was, in effect, a fee to allow Barclays to record realised profits by turning the manufactured profits into third-party transactions.
Pages: 1 2
Loading ...
Listen to Alan at SXSW
You must be logged in to post a comment.