By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: March 13th, 2011 FSA and Business Secretary Vince Cable among those handed evidence linked to Operation Hornet investigation into alleged £1 billion scam. An alleged £1 billion HBOS corporate fraud was known to former directors of the state-rescued bank, but they failed to act on the information, sources [...]
By: Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 3rd, 2010 A former HBOS banker who has been linked to an alleged money-laundering scandal was arrested and bailed last week by the economic crime unit of Thames Valley Police. In the first arrest of a financier on suspicion of criminal behaviour from the UK’s state-rescued banking [...]
Blog post revised and retitled October 3rd, 2010 A fourth person has been arrested in relation to Thames Valley Police’s investigation into “corruption and large-scale fraud in connection with HBOS”. [Note: comments on this post have now been disabled and earlier comments from witnesses have been removed as a result of the police investigation "Operation [...]
By Ian Fraser and Michael Tait Published: The Mail on Sunday Date: February 22nd, 2010 AN SNP donor whose ski resort went bust owing the taxpayer millions of pounds has been allowed to buy it back in a cut-price deal. The Aviemore complex, which was jointly owned by Nationalist supporter Donald Macdonald, collapsed last summer. [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: November 8th, 2009 The way some newspapers presented it, one might have thought that last Tuesday’s bank bail-out measures were a glorious victory. Plucky British bankers and politicians had taken on Neelie Kroes and those meddling bureaucrats of Brussels and won, ensuring that great British institutions such as [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Independent on Sunday Date: November 8th, 2009 Just four months before its humiliating collapse into the arms of Lloyds, the bank’s chairman assured shareholders that it had sufficient funds for at least a year. How could he have got it so wrong? Ian Fraser reports Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, the chairman [...]
By Ian Fraser and Margareta Pagano Published: Independent on Sunday Date: November 8th, 2009 A Financial Services Authority investigation into whether HBOS’s former board may have misled investors at the time of the bank’s abortive £4bn rights issue last year could “open the floodgates” to hundreds of civil court actions against Lloyds Banking Group, which [...]
November 3rd, 2009 (first published June 9th, 2009) [Note: comments on this post have been disabled and earlier comments from witnesses have been removed as a result of the current Thames Valley Police and Serious Organised Crime Agency investigation and expected trial. Ian Fraser, January 5th, 2011. Minor edits on January 29th, 2012] A recent [...]
Updated October 29th, 2009 (first published October 9th, 2009) Lloyds Banking Group has been given the go-ahead to proceed with a £13.5bn rights issue as part of a wider capital-raising. Given their knowledge of the extent of the challenges facing the bank, were the tripartite authorities (the FSA, Bank of England and H.M. Treasury) well-advised [...]
October 10th, 2009 How effective has the Treasury Select Committee, chaired by John McFall MP for the past ten years, been in holding the government and the Financial Services Authority to account? Not very, according to Graham Senior-Milne, a former auditor and whistleblower at Scottish Widows and Lloyds TSB, who alerted his employer, the authorities [...]
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