During a lengthy grilling by MPs, former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond has claimed that the Labour government and regulators were warned on multiple occasions regarding other banks rigging interest rates.
Diamond claimed that there had even been private conversations with senior government officials about the practice amongst banks, spanning back four years ago.
He implied that during this time, Barclays was consistently warning regulators about LIBOR manipulation by other banks, and he was only aware very recentl of the role that Barclays traders had been playing.
He also expressed a feeling that he and Barclays are being unfairly criticized because they were the first bank to put their hands up to the ill-practice and fully co-operate with regulators.
