Deutsche Bank Settles Lawsuit for Price Rigging, Turns “State’s Evidence” on Other Banks (GOLD)
This is another criminal scandal involving the TBTF banks. Fixing prices in precious metals markets.
Deutsche Bank Settles Lawsuit for Price Rigging, Turns “State’s Evidence” on Other Banks
By: Clint Siegner - Published: Tuesday, 19 April 2016
Prior to last week, Deutsche Bank made headlines for a string of huge losses and massive exposure to risky derivatives. The last time the firm’s shares traded at prices this low, the world was in the midst of 2008’s financial apocalypse.
Deutsche Bank didn’t need more bad news, but a group of investors who brought suit against the massive German bank for cheating them by rigging the London “fix” price for gold and silver certainly must be smiling. Last week, the bank offered to settle their class action suit for an undisclosed amount.
Perhaps more importantly, DB promises to provide evidence to help the plaintiffs in their suit against the other banks who participated in manipulating the fix: Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, HSBC and SocGen. In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni, the plaintiff’s attorney said, “In addition to valuable monetary consideration, Deutsche Bank has also agreed to provide cooperation to the Plaintiffs, including the production of instant messages and other electronic communications, as part of the settlement.”
If the information DB provides is incriminating, as the plaintiff’s expect, it won’t be the only recent example of bankers getting caught talking smugly amongst themselves about swindling investors and clients. A year ago Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and RBS pled guilty to criminally rigging the foreign exchange markets following the leak of some embarrassing communiques.
That case rested, in large part, on logs from an exclusive chat group participants dubbed “The Cartel.”
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There have been exactly zero “perp walks” by high ranking executives at any of the major banks over the past decade. This despite overwhelming evidence of pervasive fraud in mortgage underwriting, derivatives, commodities trading, and currency markets. Instead, taxpayers pay for the bailouts and company shareholders get to pay the fines or settlements, which are often substantially smaller than the ill-gotten gains. None of the criminal bankers responsible end up in prison....
