Page 12 - Barclays Bank (B)

The collusion had been discovered by internal emails, first of

Barclays and later of other banks which served as evidence. In
2007, a first internal email of Barclays was sent to, among others,

officials of the World Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
and the Dutch Ministry of Finance. This email reported on

‘unrealistically low Libors’. The FSA also presented evidence and

in one instance, a trader who recounted a conversation in which
he had "begged" the submitter to put in a lower Libor figure.

Other examples given were:

"I'm like, dude, you're killing us," he said. His manager

replied, "just tell him to... put it low".

In turn, the staff submitting the data would respond to the
traders' requests.

"For you…anything," said one. "Done… for you big

boy," said another.

Moreover, Barclays staff were frequently lobbied by its
derivatives traders to put in figures which would benefit their

trading positions, in order to produce a profit for the bank.

Likewise, during the credit crisis they put in artificially low figures,
to avoid the suspicion that Barclays was under financial stress and

thus having to borrow at noticeably higher rates than its

competitors. The FSA pointed out that there appeared to be an
"accepted culture" amongst some of Barclays’ staff who were

quite open in their attempts to lobby their colleagues who
submitted estimates of their own interbank lending rates to the

BBA. An external trader thanked Barclays’ for its LIBOR

submission: