RIGGED
The Incredible True Story of the Whistleblowers Jailed after Exposing the Rotten Heart of the Financial System
Optioned by HTM Television
Genre:
Biography & Memoirs, Current Issues, Economy & Politics
Author:
Andy Verity
Publisher:
Flint
Language:
English
AUTHOR BIO:
Andy Verity is the award-winning economics correspondent for BBC News, covering finance and business on the BBC radio and TV bulletins as well as reporting for BBC's Panorama, Newsnight and BBC Radio 4’s investigative strand, File on Four. He has led the media in exposing the true story behind the scandal of interest rate rigging, including a Panorama film revealing the Bank of England’s role in it and The Lowball Tapes, a 2022 podcast for BBC Radio 4 shortlisted for two awards. This is his firs...
Pages:
348
Publication:
2023
Rights available:
Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Swedish
DESCRIPTION:
Rigged picks up where The Big Short leaves off, in the autumn of 2007, as the dark clouds of the financial crisis gather. Financial institutions enter a state of panic. For the Big 16 banks, their measure of health is an interest rate measure known as Libor (the London Interbank Offered Rate). The higher the Libor, the worse off the bank – too high and it’s goodnight Vienna. Libor is heading skywards. To save themselves from collapse, nationalization and loss of bonuses, banks and financial institutions conspire to rig Libor so it stays artificially low, a criminal practice known as lowballing. A handful of low-level traders, outraged after being ordered to rig Libor, turn whistleblowers, alerting the Wall Street Journal. When it proves impossible for the investigators to pin the crime on the banks themselves, they turn on the traders. They charge them with rigging interest rates for profit, a crime of which – as Rigged proves – they were innocent.
30 traders have been prosecuted at the time of writing, with 11 convicted, 13 acquitted and 6 on the run. They remain the only bankers jailed since the 2008 financial crisis – and they’re innocent of the crimes of which they are accused. In fact, as Rigged exclusively shows, the crimes didn’t even take place. These trials served as a distraction, allowing the real perpetrators – bank bosses and executives, the people who played havoc with ordinary people’s money – to go unpunished.
Innocent people jailed for years for doing the right thing, their lives ruined and families destroyed. One of the most spectacular miscarriages of justice the US and UK have ever seen. How could this happen?
Turns out, it’s not just the market that’s rigged – it’s the entire system.
REVIEWS:
"One of the most powerful and shocking stories I've ever read - a real blood-boiler. Andy Verity, one of the BBC's top financial reporters, exposes with shining clarity one of the greatest scandals of modern times.... in a modern day version of the Salem witch trials, the financial and political establishment in Britain and America worked together to ruin the lives of low-level City traders who were sentenced to jail for crimes which were at best minor, and may never have been committed at all. Meanwhile famous and powerful figures in the City and Whitehall escaped unscathed. This book, which shows the Establishment in Britain and the US at its very worst, has totally destroyed my faith in British and American justice." Michael Crick "A truly shocking story of collus...
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