A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone:

A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation

POSTED: June 28, 10:15 AM ET

Comment

38

Barclays bank

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

This is a huge story:

On Wednesday, Barclays won the race to reach a deal with U.S. and British regulators, beating UBS, which was reportedly the first bank to begin cooperating with international antitrust authorities. Barclays agreed to pay at least $450 million to resolve government investigations of manipulation of Libor and the Euro interbank offered rate (or Euribor): $200 million to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $160 million tothe criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice and $92.8 million to Britain's Financial Services Authority.

I wrote about the Libor investigation in the current issue of Rolling Stone, in "The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia," about muni bond bid-rigging. Throughout this spring, while the Carollo bid-rigging case played out in a Manhattan courtroom, negotiations between banks and regulators were going on in this far larger cartel-corruption case. It’s been clear for some time now that a number of players had begun cooperating, and the only question was which bank was going to settle first.

Despite widespread expectation that it would be UBS, it turned out to be Barclays. You know how in Law and Order Jack McCoy always puts the two murder accomplices in separate rooms and tells them both that whoever talks first wins? Something like that happened here. In any case, the Department of Justice filing on the settlement contained excerpts of emails and other evidence that recall the taped phone conversations in the Carollo case: once again, we have seemingly incontrovertible evidence of wide-scale market manipulation. From Alison Frankel at Reuters:

Barclays employees agreed to manipulate the rates they submitted to the banking authority that oversees the daily Libor report for seemingly anyone who asked them to monkey with it: senior Barclays officials concerned that the bank would look weak if it reported too high a borrowing rate; interest rate swap traders trying to improve Barclays' derivatives trading position; even former Barclays traders begging for favors. We're talking naked, blatant manipulation. Here's one exchange cited in the DOJ filing:

Trader: "Can you pls continue to go in for 3m Libor at 5.365 or lower, we are all very long cash here in ny."

Libor rate submitter: "How long?"

Trader: "Until the effective date goes over year end (i.e. turn drops out) if possible."

Submitter: "Will do my best sir."

This is unbelievable, shocking stuff. A sizable chunk of the world’s adjustable-rate investment vehicles are pegged to Libor, and here we have evidence that banks were tweaking the rate downward to massage their own derivatives positions. The consequences for this boggle the mind. For instance, almost every city and town in America has investment holdings tied to Libor. If banks were artificially lowering the rates to beef up their trading profiles, that means communities all over the world were cheated out of ungodly amounts of money.

First there were huge bid-rigging settlements for Chase, UBS, Bank of America, GE and Wachovia. Now we’ve got a $450 million settlement for Barclays for Libor manipulation, and one imagines this won’t be the end of it. Anyway, more on this to come soon, and if you’re wondering, yes, there should be a lot more press on this.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/a-huge-break-in-the-libor-banking-investigation-20120628#ixzz1zJ8AYLjc
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A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone:

A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation

POSTED: June 28, 10:15 AM ET

Comment

38

Barclays bank

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

This is a huge story:

On Wednesday, Barclays won the race to reach a deal with U.S. and British regulators, beating UBS, which was reportedly the first bank to begin cooperating with international antitrust authorities. Barclays agreed to pay at least $450 million to resolve government investigations of manipulation of Libor and the Euro interbank offered rate (or Euribor): $200 million to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $160 million tothe criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice and $92.8 million to Britain's Financial Services Authority.

I wrote about the Libor investigation in the current issue of Rolling Stone, in "The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia," about muni bond bid-rigging. Throughout this spring, while the Carollo bid-rigging case played out in a Manhattan courtroom, negotiations between banks and regulators were going on in this far larger cartel-corruption case. It’s been clear for some time now that a number of players had begun cooperating, and the only question was which bank was going to settle first.

Despite widespread expectation that it would be UBS, it turned out to be Barclays. You know how in Law and Order Jack McCoy always puts the two murder accomplices in separate rooms and tells them both that whoever talks first wins? Something like that happened here. In any case, the Department of Justice filing on the settlement contained excerpts of emails and other evidence that recall the taped phone conversations in the Carollo case: once again, we have seemingly incontrovertible evidence of wide-scale market manipulation. From Alison Frankel at Reuters:

Barclays employees agreed to manipulate the rates they submitted to the banking authority that oversees the daily Libor report for seemingly anyone who asked them to monkey with it: senior Barclays officials concerned that the bank would look weak if it reported too high a borrowing rate; interest rate swap traders trying to improve Barclays' derivatives trading position; even former Barclays traders begging for favors. We're talking naked, blatant manipulation. Here's one exchange cited in the DOJ filing:

Trader: "Can you pls continue to go in for 3m Libor at 5.365 or lower, we are all very long cash here in ny."

Libor rate submitter: "How long?"

Trader: "Until the effective date goes over year end (i.e. turn drops out) if possible."

Submitter: "Will do my best sir."

This is unbelievable, shocking stuff. A sizable chunk of the world’s adjustable-rate investment vehicles are pegged to Libor, and here we have evidence that banks were tweaking the rate downward to massage their own derivatives positions. The consequences for this boggle the mind. For instance, almost every city and town in America has investment holdings tied to Libor. If banks were artificially lowering the rates to beef up their trading profiles, that means communities all over the world were cheated out of ungodly amounts of money.

First there were huge bid-rigging settlements for Chase, UBS, Bank of America, GE and Wachovia. Now we’ve got a $450 million settlement for Barclays for Libor manipulation, and one imagines this won’t be the end of it. Anyway, more on this to come soon, and if you’re wondering, yes, there should be a lot more press on this.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/a-huge-break-in-the-libor-banking-investigation-20120628#ixzz1zJ8AYLjc
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Exposed: The big Railway Tatkal ticket scam: CNN-IBN Videos

Exposed: The big Railway Tatkal ticket scam: CNN-IBN Videos:

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Call AT&T: Stop Funding ALEC! | Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC)

Call AT&T: Stop Funding ALEC! | Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC):

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Jamie Dimon Is Not Alone

During the financial crisis, at least 18 former and current directors from Federal Reserve Banks worked in banks and corporations that collectively received over $4 trillion in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve.

US Senator Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) 
Washington, DC 
June 12, 2012

1. Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2007. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $391 billion in total financial assistance. JP Morgan Chase was also used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for the Fed's emergency lending programs. 
   
   In March of 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. The Fed also agreed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank.


2. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, served on the New York Fed's Board of Directors from 2006-2011. General Electric received $16 billion in low-interest financing from the Federal Reserve’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility during this time period.


3. Stephen Friedman. In 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap Fed loans. During the same period, Friedman, who was chairman of the New York Fed at the time, sat on the Goldman Sachs board of directors and owned Goldman stock, something the Fed’s rules prohibited. He received a waiver in late 2008 that was not made public. After Friedman received the waiver, he continued to purchase stock in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009 unbeknownst to the Fed, according to the GAO. During the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs received $814 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


4. Sanford Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York in 2006. During the financial crisis, Citigroup received over $2.5 trillion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


5. Richard Fuld, Jr, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York from 2006 to 2008. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided $183 billion in total financial assistance to Lehman before it collapsed.


6. James M. Wells, the Chairman and CEO of SunTrust Banks, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta since 2008. During the financial crisis, SunTrust received $7.5 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


7. Richard Carrion, the head of Popular Inc. in Puerto Rico, has served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2008. Popular received $1.2 billion in total financing from the Fed's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.


8. James Smith, the Chairman and CEO of Webster Bank, served on the Federal Reserve's Board of Directors in Boston from 2008-2010. Webster Bank received $550 million in total financing from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.


9. Ted Cecala, the former Chairman and CEO of Wilmington Trust, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in Philadelphia from 2008-2010. Wilmington Trust received $3.2 billion in total financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.


10. Robert Jones, the President and CEO of Old National Bancorp, has served on the Fed's Board of Directors in St. Louis since 2008. Old National Bancorp received a total of $550 million in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.


11. James Rohr, the Chairman and CEO of PNC Financial Services Group, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in Cleveland from 2008-2010. PNC received $6.5 billion in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.


12. George Fisk, the CEO of LegacyTexas Group, was a director at the Dallas Federal Reserve in 2009. During the financial crisis, his firm received a $5 million low-interest loan from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility.


13. Dennis Kuester, the former CEO of Marshall & Ilsley, served as a board director on the Chicago Federal Reserve from 2007-2008. During the financial crisis, his bank received over $21 billion in low-interest loans from the Fed.


14. George Jones, Jr., the CEO of Texas Capital Bank, has served as a board director at the Dallas Federal Reserve since 2009. During the financial crisis, his bank received $2.3 billion in total financing from the Fed's Term Auction Facility.


15. Douglas Morrison, was the Chief Financial Officer at CitiBank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, while he served as a board director at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank in 2006. During the financial crisis, CitiBank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota received over $21 billion in total financing from the Federal Reserve.


16. L. Phillip Humann, the former CEO of SunTrust Banks, served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta from 2006-2008. During the financial crisis, SunTrust received $7.5 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


17. Henry Meyer, III, the former CEO of KeyCorp, served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland from 2006-2007. During the financial crisis, KeyBank (owned by KeyCorp) received over $40 billion in total financing from the Federal Reserve.


18. Ronald Logue, the former CEO of State Street Corporation, served as a board member of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank from 2006-2007. During the financial crisis, State Street Corporation received a total of $42 billion in financing from the Federal Reserve.

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Sanders Releases Explosive Bailout List:

Sanders Releases Explosive Bailout List

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News

13 June 12

ore than $4 trillion in near zero-interest Federal Reserve loans and other financial assistance went to the banks and businesses of at least 18 current and former Federal Reserve regional bank directors in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, according to Government Accountability Office records made public for the first time today by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

On the eve of Senate testimony by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Sanders (I-Vt.) released the detailed findings on Dimon and other Fed board members whose banks and businesses benefited from Fed actions.

A Sanders provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act required the Government Accountability Office to investigate potential conflicts of interest. The Oct. 19, 2011 report by the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress laid out the findings, but did not name names. Sanders today released the names.

"This report reveals the inherent conflicts of interest that exist at the Federal Reserve.  At a time when small businesses could not get affordable loans to create jobs, the Fed was providing trillions in secret loans to some of the largest banks and corporations in America that were well represented on the boards of the Federal Reserve Banks.  These conflicts must end," Sanders said.

The GAO study found that allowing members of the banking industry to both elect and serve on the Federal Reserve's board of directors creates "an appearance of a conflict of interest" and poses "reputational risks" to the Federal Reserve System.

In Dimon's case, JPMorgan received some $391 billion of the $4 trillion in emergency Fed funds at the same time his bank was used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for emergency lending programs. In March of 2008, the Fed provided JPMorgan with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. Dimon also got the Fed to provide JPMorgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. And he convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired the troubled investment bank.

Another high-profile conflict involved Stephen Friedman, the former chairman of the New York Fed's board of directors. Late in 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. During that period, Friedman sat on the Goldman Sachs board.  He also owned Goldman stock, something that was prohibited by Federal Reserve conflict of interest regulations. Although it was not publicly disclosed at the time, Friedman received a waiver from the Fed's conflict of interest rules in late 2008. Unbeknownst to the Fed, Friedman continued to purchase shares in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009, according to the GAO.

In another case, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt was a New York Fed board member at the same time GE helped create a Commercial Paper Funding Facility during the financial crisis. The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing to GE under this emergency lending program.

Sanders on May 22 introduced legislation to prohibit banking industry and business executives from serving as directors of the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks.

To read a report summarizing the new GAO information, click here.

---

Jamie Dimon Is Not Alone

During the financial crisis, at least 18 former and current directors from Federal Reserve Banks worked in banks and corporations that collectively received over $4 trillion in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve.

US Senator Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.)
Washington, DC
June 12, 2012

1. Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2007. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $391 billion in total financial assistance. JP Morgan Chase was also used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for the Fed's emergency lending programs. 
   
   In March of 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. The Fed also agreed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank.


2. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, served on the New York Fed's Board of Directors from 2006-2011. General Electric received $16 billion in low-interest financing from the Federal Reserve’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility during this time period.


3. Stephen Friedman. In 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap Fed loans. During the same period, Friedman, who was chairman of the New York Fed at the time, sat on the Goldman Sachs board of directors and owned Goldman stock, something the Fed’s rules prohibited. He received a waiver in late 2008 that was not made public. After Friedman received the waiver, he continued to purchase stock in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009 unbeknownst to the Fed, according to the GAO. During the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs received $814 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


4. Sanford Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York in 2006. During the financial crisis, Citigroup received over $2.5 trillion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


5. Richard Fuld, Jr, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York from 2006 to 2008. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided $183 billion in total financial assistance to Lehman before it collapsed.


6. James M. Wells, the Chairman and CEO of SunTrust Banks, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta since 2008. During the financial crisis, SunTrust received $7.5 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


7. Richard Carrion, the head of Popular Inc. in Puerto Rico, has served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2008. Popular received $1.2 billion in total financing from the Fed's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.


8. James Smith, the Chairman and CEO of Webster Bank, served on the Federal Reserve's Board of Directors in Boston from 2008-2010. Webster Bank received $550 million in total financing from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.


9. Ted Cecala, the former Chairman and CEO of Wilmington Trust, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in Philadelphia from 2008-2010. Wilmington Trust received $3.2 billion in total financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.


10. Robert Jones, the President and CEO of Old National Bancorp, has served on the Fed's Board of Directors in St. Louis since 2008. Old National Bancorp received a total of $550 million in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.


11. James Rohr, the Chairman and CEO of PNC Financial Services Group, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in Cleveland from 2008-2010. PNC received $6.5 billion in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.


12. George Fisk, the CEO of LegacyTexas Group, was a director at the Dallas Federal Reserve in 2009. During the financial crisis, his firm received a $5 million low-interest loan from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility.


13. Dennis Kuester, the former CEO of Marshall & Ilsley, served as a board director on the Chicago Federal Reserve from 2007-2008. During the financial crisis, his bank received over $21 billion in low-interest loans from the Fed.


14. George Jones, Jr., the CEO of Texas Capital Bank, has served as a board director at the Dallas Federal Reserve since 2009. During the financial crisis, his bank received $2.3 billion in total financing from the Fed's Term Auction Facility.


15. Douglas Morrison, was the Chief Financial Officer at CitiBank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, while he served as a board director at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank in 2006. During the financial crisis, CitiBank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota received over $21 billion in total financing from the Federal Reserve.


16. L. Phillip Humann, the former CEO of SunTrust Banks, served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta from 2006-2008. During the financial crisis, SunTrust received $7.5 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.


17. Henry Meyer, III, the former CEO of KeyCorp, served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland from 2006-2007. During the financial crisis, KeyBank (owned by KeyCorp) received over $40 billion in total financing from the Federal Reserve.


18. Ronald Logue, the former CEO of State Street Corporation, served as a board member of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank from 2006-2007. During the financial crisis, State Street Corporation received a total of $42 billion in financing from the Federal Reserve.

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Convictions pile up on Wall Street - MarketWatch

Convictions pile up on Wall Street - MarketWatch:

Commentary: Gupta falls in feds’ ongoing war on inside jobs

June 15, 2012|MarketWatch

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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) – Rajat Gupta is a nice guy. That’s what a string of character witnesses told the U.S. District Court jury in New York where he was being tried for insider trading.

They offered hard evidence of his goodness, citing generous charitable contributions and ardent fundraising to help the world’s needy.

But he’s also a criminal. That was the verdict reached Friday by a jury of eight women and four men, who said he was guilty of conspiracy and securities fraud.

Whether Gupta was convicted by a jury of his peers depends on how you define “peers.” As the former head of McKinsey & Co., one of the business world’s most respected consulting firms, and as a former board member at Goldman Sachs (US:GS) and Procter & Gamble (US:PG), Gupta moved in circles that exclude most Americans.

But most Americans understand power and its abuse. And while the trial revolved around tedious evidence and arcane legalese, they obviously heard enough to convict Gupta of using information not available to the public to make money on publicly traded stock. That’s an abuse of trust, an abuse of power; it’s unfair and it’s illegal.

Gupta has to wait until October to hear his sentence. That might seem a long way off, but what’s a few more months when we’re talking about crimes committed in 2008?

It’s taken government prosecutors years to gather the evidence, itself a tedious process, and bundle it in a way that would successfully make the case that Wall Street insiders are, as Main Street investors have long suspected, not always playing by the rules.

But maybe it was worth the wait.

The government’s conviction rate in this latest war on white-collar crime is impressive. Nearly 70 executives have been accused of insider trading. So far, 60 have copped plea bargains and/or face prison time.

That’s not going to restore the millions of dollars pocketed by Wall Street crooks at public expense or undo their extensive damage to the economy, but watching them marched off to the Big House one by one takes some of the sting out of investment losses suffered in so many of the nation’s little houses these past few years.

Will it deter future insider trading scandals? Probably not. The rewards remain too great and the temptations too strong, even for some of the nicest guys on Wall Street. But maybe they’ll think twice before picking up the phone with a hot stock tip for their hedge fund BFFs.

— Jim Jelter

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Convictions pile up on Wall Street - MarketWatch

Convictions pile up on Wall Street - MarketWatch:

Commentary: Gupta falls in feds’ ongoing war on inside jobs

June 15, 2012|MarketWatch

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  • Email
  • Print

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) – Rajat Gupta is a nice guy. That’s what a string of character witnesses told the U.S. District Court jury in New York where he was being tried for insider trading.

They offered hard evidence of his goodness, citing generous charitable contributions and ardent fundraising to help the world’s needy.

But he’s also a criminal. That was the verdict reached Friday by a jury of eight women and four men, who said he was guilty of conspiracy and securities fraud.

Whether Gupta was convicted by a jury of his peers depends on how you define “peers.” As the former head of McKinsey & Co., one of the business world’s most respected consulting firms, and as a former board member at Goldman Sachs (US:GS) and Procter & Gamble (US:PG), Gupta moved in circles that exclude most Americans.

But most Americans understand power and its abuse. And while the trial revolved around tedious evidence and arcane legalese, they obviously heard enough to convict Gupta of using information not available to the public to make money on publicly traded stock. That’s an abuse of trust, an abuse of power; it’s unfair and it’s illegal.

Gupta has to wait until October to hear his sentence. That might seem a long way off, but what’s a few more months when we’re talking about crimes committed in 2008?

It’s taken government prosecutors years to gather the evidence, itself a tedious process, and bundle it in a way that would successfully make the case that Wall Street insiders are, as Main Street investors have long suspected, not always playing by the rules.

But maybe it was worth the wait.

The government’s conviction rate in this latest war on white-collar crime is impressive. Nearly 70 executives have been accused of insider trading. So far, 60 have copped plea bargains and/or face prison time.

That’s not going to restore the millions of dollars pocketed by Wall Street crooks at public expense or undo their extensive damage to the economy, but watching them marched off to the Big House one by one takes some of the sting out of investment losses suffered in so many of the nation’s little houses these past few years.

Will it deter future insider trading scandals? Probably not. The rewards remain too great and the temptations too strong, even for some of the nicest guys on Wall Street. But maybe they’ll think twice before picking up the phone with a hot stock tip for their hedge fund BFFs.

— Jim Jelter

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Cash-for-bail case: Suspended judge's son arrested - India News - IBNLive

Cash-for-bail case: Suspended judge's son arrested - India News - IBNLive:

India | Posted on Jun 16, 2012 at 05:43pm IST

Cash-for-bail case: Suspended judge's son arrested 

CNN-IBN

Hyderabad: In the latest development in connection with the cash-for-bail case, the anti-corruption bureau on Saturday arrested T Ravi Chandra, the son of the suspended CBI judge Pattabhi Raman Rao, and another retired judge, Chalapthi Rao.

The arrests came just hours after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday carried out raids at the residence of the suspended judge in connection with the cash-for-bail case.

Rao reportedly took Rs 6 crore from former BJP minister Gali Janardhan Reddy to grant him bail in the illegal mining scam involving the Obulapuram Mining Company.

The judge was suspended after the CBI produced evidence of him taking the bribe from the politician.

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Tamil Nadu: Man sends 'bribe' by demand draft; stuns municipal authorities - India News - IBNLive

Tamil Nadu: Man sends 'bribe' by demand draft; stuns municipal authorities - India News - IBNLive:

India | Posted on Jun 17, 2012 at 05:23am IST

Tamil Nadu: Man sends 'bribe' by demand draft; stuns municipal authorities 

Press Trust of India

Virudhunagar: Vexed over the delay in getting a birth certificate, a man Virudhunagar hit upon a bizarre idea of sending a demand draft for Rs 100 as bribe to a local body, stunning the municipality authorities who made amends for the lapse and home delivered the document.

Rattled on receiving the DD and the accompanying note which mentioned it as bribe, Municipality Commissioner Sermakani swung into action, reprimanded concerned officials and asked them to deliver the birth certificate at the home of the applicant, who is an auditor.

An official inquiry has been ordered into the incident by the Municipal Administration department, officials said. Palanisamy, a resident of the town, took the step inspired by a banner put up here by the local Congress unit mentioning the "bribe" amount required to be paid for getting things done in the municipality as part of its campaign against alleged corruption in the local body.

He said on Saturday that his son, who got a job in a multi-national company, wanted his birth certificate and he applied for it on May 15 last paying the required fee of Rs 55. The certificate should be given within seven days. But he did not receive it even after 15 days.

Meanwhile, he saw the Congress banner and drew a draft for Rs 100 on June 9 and sent it to the Municipal Commissioner with a copy of the letter to District Collector M Balaji.

Officials of the municipality, including Health officer Baskaran and Chairperson Shanthi met him and pacified him and gave the certificate yesterday, authorities said.

(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter,Google+ and Pinterest)

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