Swiss bank UBS will pay $1.5 billionfor their role in the Libor rate-rigging scandal. The sum is over three times the fine imposed on Barclays Bank for the same violations. UBS also admitted to one count of wire fraud in its Japanese unit, according to the Justice Department. Much of the rate rigging in the [...]

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which under the direction of Thomas Curry has been moderately more tough-minded against the banks, released a report that essentially admits that the big banks are poorly managed and have inadequate risk management controls. As Yves Smith points out, this means that the executives need to go [...]

Everyone expects UBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland and several others to face some sort of sanction. But we’ve been hearing about imminent charges for months now, with nothing to show for it.

Kweku Adoboli, the “rogue trader” who cost UBS billions of dollars with a bad trade in 2011, has been found guilty by a British court on two counts of fraud, while being acquitted on four other counts of false accounting. in a case most applicable to the arrest and trial of Lynndie England for torture. [...]

Several former traders at UBS have been offered a deal by federal prosecutors in the unfolding Libor scandal, which if we had a criminal justice apparatus dedicated to accountability would be a moment of hope for the potential of going up the chain and indicting those who authorized the rate-rigging. Under the deal, the US [...]

Two major European banks have increased their litigation reserves and even acknowledged involvement in the unfolding Libor scandal, recognizing that this will drag on for perhaps years. First, Deutsche Bank and UBS increased their expected costs as a result of the scandal. Both banks are caught up in the scandal around the alleged manipulation of [...]

Just to follow up on this tax return issue that is playing havoc with Mitt Romney’s Presidential campaign, it turns out that the returns he claimed to have fully disclosed were not fully disclosed: Mitt Romney has not released his full tax records from 2010, including key documentation connected to his Swiss bank account [...] [...]

The New York Times quotes anonymous government officials saying that the Justice Department is in the midst of building criminal cases in the Libor rate-rigging scandal. As regulators ramp up their global investigation into the manipulation of interest rates, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by big banks and individuals at the center [...]

This UBS “rogue trader” story is pretty amusing, especially because nobody properly explains what constitutes “unauthorized trading.” The implication is that trades that lose money are unauthorized. I think there’s not much more to it than that. And the fact that this didn’t come to light until the trader informed UBS of the “unauthorized trades” [...]