We all know how you feel about the concept that the price of gold is being manipulated, and we(I at least)respect your reasoning and reasons, but here are some valid questions:
(from example A)
Would those in the banking & brokerage industry who are willing to defraud their own clients be above defrauding the whole system through manipulation?
If there are not enough safeguards to prevent theft from customers, why should we believe there are enough safeguards to prevent conspiracy and price manipulations?
(from example B)
We have seen the official spin in this case turn from "fraud" & "theft" to "incompetence" & "loss". If a multi-national bank will not safeguard against while first claiming fraud & theft - then admits to a lack of safeguards against incompetence and loss in their currency trading unit and has attempted lay $3/4B theft/loss all at the feet of a single trader - what is it that they say should the public believe?
Would a multi-national bank use gold derivatives in their currency trading unit?
How could a $750M loss or fraud/theft - over a year long period - gone undetected without some level of internal conspiracy and manipulation?
If the banks won't regulate, act to prevent, safeguard against, tell the truth about, or even insure against rogue-trading, why should we believe them when they say they don't manipulate the price of gold?
If a multi-national bank will attempt to conspire with the FBI to manipulate opinion and charges against their own employee, why should we believe they wouldn't conspire with others for profit?
(A)Fugitive U.S. Stockbroker Turns Himself in to FBI
Sun Feb 10,12:46 PM ET
CLEVELAND, Ohio (Reuters) - A fugitive Lehman Brothers stockbroker, who went missing with as much as $300 million in investors' funds, has surrendered to the FBI (news - web sites) after a month in hiding, an FBI spokeswoman said on Sunday.
Frank Gruttadauria, 44, turned himself over to the FBI late Saturday and was jailed in Euclid, Ohio, to await a preliminary hearing in U.S. District Court on Monday, the agency said.
Gruttadauria, manager of Lehman's Cleveland office since October 2000, admitted in a letter to the FBI last month that he had bilked investors out of a sum estimated at $300 million over the past 15 years.
During most of that period, he worked for SG Cowen Securities Corp., which was acquired by Lehman Brothers in October 2000.
The stockbroker, who lived on a lavish scale in a country mansion in Gates Mills, Ohio, told FBI agents he had kept on the move over the past month, spending most of that time in the Colorado Springs and the Buffalo, New York, areas.
Gruttadauria told the FBI he was able to conceal the fraud from his superiors by shifting money from one account to another, systematically looting each account. He said he was surprised that he got away with it without detection for so many years.
William Ahearn, a spokesman for Lehman Brothers, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper that Gruttadauria's surrender was "a great development in everyone's attempts to get to the bottom of what he has been doing with clients' money for the past 15 years."
Among some 25 investors who lost millions(cont)
story.news.yahoo.com
(B)Sunday February 10, 10:01 am Eastern Time
AIB says U.S. banker to lead fraud probe
(UPDATE: Adds comments from chief executive radio interview after paragraph 4)
By Kevin Smith
DUBLIN, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Allied Irish Bank said on Sunday it had appointed a U.S. banking expert to head an investigation into a suspected fraud at its U.S. subsidiary which has cost the bank $750 million.
AIB said Eugene Ludwig, managing partner of Washington-based Promontory Financial Group, will take charge of the probe into how a currency trader at AIB's Allfirst Financial Inc unit in Baltimore ran up massive foreign exchange losses without setting off alarms with senior management.
A report from Ludwig, a former Comptroller of the U.S. Currency, was due within 30 days, the bank said.
``He is, I would say, peerless in terms of his qualifications to provide an independent report...that our board can act upon in full confidence,'' AIB Chief Executive Michael Buckley told Irish radio.
Earlier an AIB spokesman confirmed it believed the trader -- 37-year-old U.S. citizen John Rusnak -- had falsified documents to cover a spiral of bad investments.
Rusnak is accused of trying to disguise huge dollar/yen foreign exchange losses with fictitious trades.
A U.S. source close to a federal investigation into the case had told Reuters that part of Rusnak's strategy as the losses mounted was to create the illusion that contracts with other banks existed to defray the damage.
This involved falsifying documents, an offence carrying a potential 30-year jail sentence and a $1 million fine.
``We have said we think he is guilty of fraudulent activity and falsifying documents would be the type of thing being referred to,'' an AIB spokesman said.
He said the bank's internal investigations were still at too early a stage to say whether the trader had profited from his actions or was engaged purely in covering losses.
The spokesman said documentary evidence pointed to some level of internal and external collusion.
``However, there is no indication at this stage just who colluded. That is something for the investigation,'' he said.
NO BONUSES
Lawyers for Rusnak, known in his community as a family man and an upstanding citizen, have denied their client stole money from the bank.
How a trader in a treasury unit with revenues of less than $10 million a year could have brought about such large losses without triggering control mechanisms is a key question.
Experts have been shocked that AIB failed to detect the kind of sums Rusnak was trading for over a year, and also that safety measures taken by others after rogue trader Nick Leeson brought about the collapse of Britain's Barings bank in 1993 had not been introduced at the Irish bank.
(cont)
biz.yahoo.com
(B - part 2)
Banks Ignore Rogue-Trading Insurance
Sun Feb 10, 7:24 AM ET
By Simon Challis, European Insurance Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Allied Irish Bank Corp. Plc. (AIB), the bank reeling from a $750 million rogue trading loss, is unlikely to get any help from insurers, even though a policy does exist to cover just this risk.
Although banks routinely buy insurance to cover themselves against theft or fraud by their employees, such policies pay out only when a bank can show its employees kept the money for themselves. (cont)
story.news.yahoo.com |
