LOW FLAT RATE AUST-WIDE $9.90 DELIVERY INFO

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Rigged

The Incredible True Story of the Whistleblowers Jailed after Exposing the Rotten Heart of the...

Andy Verity

$65

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
The History Press Ltd
01 August 2023
Rigged picks up where The Big Short leaves off, in the autumn of 2007, as the dark clouds of the financial crisis gather. Financial institutions enter a state of panic. For the Big 16 banks, their measure of health is an interest rate measure known as Libor (the London Interbank Offered Rate). The higher the Libor, the worse off the bank – too high and it's goodnight Vienna. Libor is heading skywards. To save themselves from collapse, nationalisation and loss of bonuses, banks and financial institutions conspire to rig Libor so it stays artificially low, a criminal practice known as lowballing. A handful of low-level traders, outraged after being ordered to rig Libor, turn whistleblowers, alerting the Wall Street Journal. When it proves impossible for the investigators to pin the crime on the banks themselves, they turn on the traders. They charge them with rigging interest rates for profit, a crime of which – as Rigged proves – they were innocent.

30 traders have been prosecuted at the time of writing, with 11 convicted, 13 acquitted and 6 on the run. They remain the only bankers jailed since the 2008 financial crisis – and they're innocent of the crimes of which they are accused. In fact, as Rigged exclusively shows, the crimes didn't even take place. These trials served as a distraction, allowing the real perpetrators – bank bosses and executives, the people who played havoc with ordinary people's money – to go unpunished.

Innocent people jailed for years for doing the right thing, their lives ruined and families destroyed. One of the most spectacular miscarriages of justice the USA and UK have ever seen. How could this happen?

Turns out, it's not just the market that's rigged – it's the entire system.

AUTHOR: Andy Verity is the award-winning economics correspondent for BBC News, covering finance and business on the BBC radio and TV bulletins as well as reporting for Panorama, BBC Newsnight and BBC Radio 4's investigative strand, File on Four. He can currently be heard on the Today programme, Radio Four's six o'clock news and the BBC News TV channel reporting the worst economic crisis in 300 years caused by the pandemic - all the while knowing how much of the truth about the previous mega-crisis has been covered up and kept from the public. Joining the BBC from The Independent, he worked first as personal finance correspondent then as a presenter on BBC Radio Five Live, where for 8 years he hosted the BBC's daily financial radio programme and popular podcast Wake up to Money. Before the credit crunch struck in 2007 he proposed a TV series warning of the risks of an imminent crash in the housing market which became BBC2's The Truth About Property, attracting an unusually large audience; it was repeat-commissioned both before and after the crisis of 2008. Since being appointed economics correspondent in 2014, he's broadcast and published high-impact investigative stories including a Panorama film which revealed the Bank of England's role in the Libor scandal and a 2018 documentary exposing money laundering by a Ukrainian gangster, where he made headlines when one of the gangster's thugs kicked him in the groin. In a more recent film, Following the Drug Money, Andy exposed how global consultants EY covered up evidence of smuggling by an organised crime gang that was laundering the proceeds of sales of illegal drugs in the UK via the gold markets of Dubai. He lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife and daughter.

By:  
Imprint:   The History Press Ltd
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 156mm, 
ISBN:   9780750998857
ISBN 10:   0750998857
Pages:   348
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Unspecified

Andy Verity is the award-winning economics correspondent for BBC News, covering finance and business on the BBC radio and TV bulletins as well as reporting for BBC's Panorama, Newsnight and BBC Radio 4’s investigative strand, File on Four. He has led the media in exposing the true story behind the scandal of interest rate rigging, including a Panorama film revealing the Bank of England’s role in it and 'The Lowball Tapes', a 2022 podcast for BBC Radio 4 shortlisted for two awards. This is his first book.

Reviews for Rigged: The Incredible True Story of the Whistleblowers Jailed after Exposing the Rotten Heart of the Financial System

One of the most powerful and shocking stories I've ever read - a real blood-boiler. Andy Verity, one of the BBC's top financial reporters, exposes with shining clarity one of the greatest scandals of modern times... in a modern-day version of the Salem witch trials, the financial and political establishment in Britain and America worked together to ruin the lives of 37 low-level City traders. They were sentenced to huge jail terms for crimes which were at best minor, and may never have committed at all. Meanwhile, famous and powerful figures in the City and Whitehall who seem to have committed far worse offences, escaped unscathed. This book shows the Establishment in Britain and the US at its very worst. It has totally destroyed my faith in British and American justice. -- Michael Crick If you’ve ever suspected the banking system of operating in someone else’s interest than yours, you’re right. It is a world of clever, amoral young people endlessly searching for ways to bend the rules. We badly need men in white hats to control them. Verity mercilessly demonstrates we ain’t got ‘em. Andy Verity is a reporter’s reporter. If only there were more like him. -- Jeremy Paxman Andy has always been an uncompromising journalist, and he's fought to tell a dystopian tale of a lowballing scandal at the top of financial society. I suspect reading the details will be eye popping. -- Martin Lewis A brilliant and compelling account of a huge establishment cover-up. The stories of low-level traders who found themselves expendable are brutal and heart-rending. I was prepared to hear that the big beasts of the banking world protected themselves at the expense of those further down the food chain, I was less prepared for the revelations that official UK institutions appeared to contribute to the miscarriages of justice Verity brings to life. -- Victoria Derbyshire A truly shocking story of collusion, conspiracy and cover-up at the heart of our financial establishment that have led to grave miscarriages of justice. The book surely provides the basis for a renewed Parliamentary inquiry. -- John McDonnell MP This book is a must-read for investors, economists and bankers - and all those wary of global 'markets' in money or commodities. It is the story of a judicial system that punished whistle-blowers not perpetrators. Above all, it's the story of how a rigorous investigative journalist, some brave whistle-blowers and the US courts, cracked open a closed and corrupt circuit of London bankers. -- Ann Pettifor 'The book has strong evidence that central banks not only knew about this rigging, they encouraged it.' – Evening Standard


See Also