A person who gave crucial information about the Libo affair has been awarded $200 million from US regulators. It would be the largest reward ever for a whistleblower who exposed abuses at banks.
The scandal, in which banks manipulated interest rates on a large scale, came to light in 2013. Thanks in part to information from the whistleblower, fines of USD 3 billion could be imposed, the regulator CFTC reports.
For example, Rabobank had to pay 774 million euros for its part in the scandal. A number of traders of the Dutch bank were also sentenced to prison terms.
‘Incredible’
The identity of the whistleblower has not been released. It would be a former employee of Deutsche Bank, Reuters news agency reported on the basis of anonymous sources. A well-known whistleblower lawyer in the US calls the amount of the reward “unbelievable”.
Libor interest is the interest that banks charge each other when they lend money to each other. By tampering with it, the traders could make millions of dollars and get higher bonuses.
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