Yesterday, the prefecture of Trani opened a file against Barclays in Milan for probable manipulation of the Euribor by the English bank to the detriment of the 2,5 million Italians who are paying a mortgage. This is the complaint of Federconsumatori and Adusbef.
After seizing the documents, the prosecutor Michele Ruggiero called the president of AIAF, Alfonso Scarano, and Nicola Benini, CEO of Ita Consulting, to analyze the papers.
Even the Swiss bank UBS is in the storm. Indeed, UBS has rejected any questions about its role in the global Libor scandal, after just reporting a disappointing second-quarter report on Tuesday (the profit is only 698 million francs, almost half of 2011).
UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti has denied that his bank played a major role in the Libor scandal, insisting there is no evidence of manipulation by UBS.
UBS revealed it cautioned its traders last year, cut itself out of deals with Swiss and US authorities to recondition leniency or immunity from lawsuits involving manipulation of the Japanese yen, the yen-euro relationship and tasis Libor.
The bank was also "forced" to tighten up its supervisor in Japan by the Japanese authorities after the irregularities it received at the bank.
The internal investigation at Banca UBS searched millions of documents, without however finding evidence that indicated manipulation of the Libor or Euribor rate.
However, the UBS bank is under investigation in many jurisdictions for manipulating interest rates.
In Switzerland, Credit Swiss is also one of the banks on the suspect list, but it appears to be less "guilty" than UBS.
However, the Swiss bank has admitted that some of its traders have taken part in these illegal activities.
UBS is one of 12 banks that are in the suspect book of the Libor scandal; another of these is the German Deutsche Bank.
The latter has admitted that "a limited number" of employees have taken part in the scandal, also announcing that it intends to lay off 1900 people, many of these outside Germany, due to the crisis, saving 3 billion.
Japanese, American and European authorities are investigating not only Libor, but also Euribor more than a dozen banks.
In a letter, the CEO of the German bank, Paul Achleitner, said that "a limited number of employees, acting on their own initiative, have engaged in illegal activities and action has been taken."
The data provided in the second quarter are negative: earnings collapsed to 375 million euros, from 969 million in the same period in 2011.
