Ex-HBOS bosses knew about £1bn fraud threat - sources

Author: Laura Miller
IFAonline | 14 Mar 2011 | 08:00

Categories: Better Business

Topics: HBOS| RBS| Lloyds Banking Group| Hector Sants| FSA

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An alleged £1bn HBOS corporate fraud was known to former directors of the state-rescued bank, but they failed to act on the information, according to sources close to police investigators.

A dossier of evidence to support the claims  has been handed by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the Sunday Herald reports.

The dossier of 50 letters has also been sent to FSA chief executive Hector Sants, Treasury Select Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie, other members of the parliamentary committee, and to business secretary Vince Cable, according to police sources.

Addressees of the letters are thought to include HBOS directors who were allegedly alerted to the fraud fears by directors of “victimised” corporate customers during 2007 but failed to investigate the claims.

Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, the former chairman of HBOS, is thought to be among the names, as well as Andy Hornby, the bank's former chief executive, head of corporate lending Peter Cummings and non-executive directors including Charles Dunstone and Sir Ron Garrick.

The HSBOS probe has been called “one of the largest fraud investigations of its type in UK history” by police.

Between mid-2002 and late 2007, the main suspects in the case are alleged to have stolen and laundered about £1bn.

The money had been lent by HBOS’s Bank of Scotland Corporate division to 200 corporate customer accounts.

Physical assets worth scores of millions are also alleged to have been stolen. 

Lloyds TSB took over HBOS in a £12.2bn all-share deal in September 2008, three days after Lehman Brothers went bust.

The following month the government was forced to bail out the banking sector and pumped £11.5bn into HBOS, £5.5bn into Lloyds and £20bn into Royal Bank of Scotland.

An ongoing criminal investigation into the alleged fraud at HBOS, code-named Operation Hornet, has been underway since June 2010.

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This is only ONE of HBOS' major frauds!

This isn't the only HBOS fraud - Vavasseur involved sophisticated theft via offshore accounts belonging to different banks, all of which linked into an HBOS-controlled 'umbrella company' in the IOM, conveniently where HBOS' offshore headquarters were. Some 10 years later, about $200 million is still "missing" - or rather, concealed, since the SFO and the FSA ensured all evidence was hidden from the victims. Robert Wardle ex SFO director is heavily and criminally implicated in the Vavasseur fraud - he obviously got bought off by HBOS as he stopped all prosecution against HBOS and then resigned from the SFO and went to work for HBOS' main solicitors, DLA Piper! They in turn got a job on the bogus and disingenuous liquidation of Dobb White, the convenient scapegoats who fronted the entire heist. It is horrific and galling to have discovered, after peeling back the layers over so many years, that this Vavasseur fraud traces back to the Authorities and HBOS who loaned "mortgages" to at least half of the victims, which is how they fund-raised their own ponzi scheme at such a rapid rate. We urgently need to bring Fraser Mackay from the HBOS Manchester Division to book, along with James Crosby himself - the "Mortgage Tsar" who got knighted for his crimes. Crosby was pulling strings from inside the FSA long before he took up his post there as 'deputy chairman'. Self regulation is one thing, but using self regulation to STEAL innocent people's money is unforgiveable and its time the Authorities cut the crap and took the steps to prosecute these criminals, which they should have done at least 7 years ago. Notably, the money all ended up on American shores, put there by the FSA (returned back to this US-originated ponzi) - a criminal act on the part of the FSA who had no business nor right to touch the creditors moneys which were supposedly held lIN TRUST. The deception in the Vavasseur fraud has been hideous and extensive, and the money laundering could not have occurred without the FSA enabling the entire swindle. Both the FSA and the SFO Directors ought to be prosecuted and SHUT DOWN - for they are a PUblic liability and evoke "spiritual wickedness in high places" parading as do-gooders, when they are, in fact, the exact opposite. Someone please do something to bring HBOS and the FSA and the SFO to book,

Posted by: One voice Action Group

15 Mar 2011 | 01:58
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