The former global
head of Credit Suisse's structured credit trading, Kareem Serageldin, is expected
to receive about five years in prison when he is sentenced in August for his
role in the banking crash. Serageldin, “deliberately inflated the value of
mortgages and bonds … and ordered two others in his team to do the same.” Serageldin's
artificial valuations led to a £1.7 billion write-down in the company's 2007
year-end financial results and contributed to masking the failure of the
sub-prime mortgage market that caused the collapse of the banking system. I
hope to see more of these arrests in the near future to show bankers that the
US government will not tolerate unethical and illegal behavior.
4 comments:
Chris,
Interesting article here. I agree with you that I hope to see this as a precedent for those high ranking officials around the world who have the ability and access to resources that allow them to have such huge impacts on the economy.
Chris, I couldn't agree with you more. It is great to see the government going after white-collar criminals. This is a big step in the right direction. I wonder if we will see more people brought to court and sentenced to jail, instead of just getting fined.
Given the track record of the finance sector over the past ten years, we should all seriously worry about white collar crime. Bernie Madoff, the Libor Scandal, and Raj Rajaratnam are just a few examples of what seems to be an incredibly widespread issue. I don't have the data, but I wonder if the current levels of reported crime within finance is historically high or low? With an increase in recent convictions, maybe this disincentive will help finance become a 'cleaner' industry.
This is a positive shift in prosecuting the financial sector.I think many people have lost a sense of justice, and maybe more traders coming clean will help.
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