Help put a banker in jail

help cuff a banker

If you had stolen a can of beer in last summer’s riots last year, got caught, you would now be serving a prison sentence.

Has a single banker been charged for rigging the market, otherwise known as fraud?

We all know the answer, and it is no.

Is spiv banker Bob Diamond facing criminal charges?

Bob Diamond has so far milked Barclays to the tune of £100 million. He is due to walk away from Barclays with £2 million in his pocket. No wonder when he appeared before the Treasury Select Committee he kept saying how much he loved Barclays. He had 100 million reasons to love Barclays.

One pound invested in Barclays when Bob Diamond took over is now worth 30 pence.

The banks are too big. They have to be broken into smaller banks. Casino banking has to be separated from retail banking. Then if a bank fails, we let it go under.

We have to bring in criminal sanctions for spiv bankers who step over the line. Not a mild slap on the wrist and a £2 million pay-off for being fired.

Big banks have been caught in a massive scam to rig interest rates, ripping off millions of people on their mortgages, student loans and more! We’d go to jail for this. The fine on Barclays Bank sounds huge, but it is only a tiny fraction of their massive profits. Now the government is asking the public if guilty bank bosses should be locked up.

Bank bosses such as Barclays’ Bob Diamond have pocketed tens of millions in bonuses thanks to this fraudulent behaviour. So far they’ve got off scott free, but the tide is turning. Chancellor George Osborne has just started an official public consultation on whether reckless bosses should be jailed. But the banks are lobbying hard against it, and we need a massive surge of people power to drive these reforms through.

If we can get 100,000 people in the next three days to say yes to criminal charges for bankers, we can get George Osborne to face down the banking lobby and put the bank bosses behind bars.

Please sign now and share widely — when we reach 100,000 signers we’ll deliver it to the Treasury’s consultation:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/bankers_behind_bars_g/

The full scale of the scandal is still unknown, but what we do know is breathtaking: “several” unnamed major banks were involved (the usual suspects RBS and Lloyds have been mentioned), and the rigging of the LIBOR interest rate, the rate on which many of the world’s interest rates are based, affected the value of literally hundreds of trillions of dollars in investments. Barclays alone has admitted to committing this fraud “hundreds” of times.

We know a massive push from us can work. If it had not been for the public outcry, Bob Diamond would still be in his job as boss of Barclays. After the Enron scandal directors were made individually responsible for preventing accounting fraud. Now the government’s new official consultation will determine whether bank bosses are made individually responsible for their banks’ culture and practices. The public consultation results will feed into two Bills that are now before Parliament.

The system is rigged, and that’s a crime. The big bosses have a right to a fair trial, but it’s time to hold them to account and put the criminals behind bars. We can make this happen.

Please sign now, then share widely — if 100,000 of us join the call, we can ensure criminal sanctions for bankers who commit financial crimes:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/bankers_behind_bars_g/

Last summer, against the odds, we succeeded in getting politicians to cut their ties to the evil Murdoch Empire and ensure prosecution of those responsible for phone hacking were arrested. Now, together, we can end the impunity for spiv bankers.

Top Story in QuartzServicesUK’s Anti Fraud News (Saturday 14 July 2012).

Tags: banks, Barclays, libor