{"id":146950,"date":"2018-06-27T01:07:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T01:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/mps-seek-report-into-hbos-reading-probe-by-lloyds\/"},"modified":"2018-06-27T01:07:07","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T01:07:07","slug":"mps-seek-report-into-hbos-reading-probe-by-lloyds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/mps-seek-report-into-hbos-reading-probe-by-lloyds\/","title":{"rendered":"MPs seek report into HBOS Reading probe by Lloyds"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Lloyds bank\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/FDCB\/production\/_102217946_lloyds.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  PA                                                    <\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">Investigators looking into allegations of a cover-up of a \u00a31bn pound fraud at HBOS have been told by MPs they must hand over their findings to parliament. <\/p>\n<p>Treasury Select Committee chair Nicky Morgan says she found the details disclosed in a leaked report into the alleged cover-up &quot;deeply troubling&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>The report claims HBOS failed to disclose the fraud before being rescued by Lloyds during the financial crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Morgan said the committee will seek &quot;maximum transparency&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>The Lloyds Banking Group internal report - known as Project Lord Turnbull - claimed that since 2007, HBOS had a strategy to conceal a fraud at its Reading office where corrupt bankers forced business customers to take on a firm of so-called turnaround consultants. <\/p>\n<p>But instead of being helped, customers ended up ruined. Many lost their livelihoods, their marriages and their health.<\/p>\n<p>The report surfaced on the internet last week and was later published by Kevin Hollinrake MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Read the Project Lord Turnbull report here: Part one and Part two <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In April, Lloyds Banking Group appointed Dame Linda Dobbs to investigate. <\/p>\n<p>However, the bank hasn&#039;t committed to making Dame Linda&#039;s findings public. MPs are insisting they must be turned over to parliament.<\/p>\n<h2>Maximum transparency<\/h2>\n<p>Ms Morgan said: &quot;The fraud at HBOS Reading was a shocking crime that destroyed lives and livelihoods. There are numerous investigations into the events, including the Dame Linda Dobbs Review and an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).&quot;<\/p>\n<p>She said: &quot;There are deeply troubling allegations raised in the &quot;Project Lord Turnbull&quot; report, which are at the heart of Dame Linda&#039;s and the FCA&#039;s investigations. The committee will consider the findings of this work when it&#039;s completed.<\/p>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  Getty Images<figcaption>Image caption                                      Treasury Select Committee chair Nicky Morgan                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&quot;In the meantime, we will continue to press for maximum transparency. It is overwhelmingly in the public interest to understand how such a huge criminal fraud was allowed to happen, and why it took so long for it to come to light.&quot;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ex-HBOS banker &#039;sold his soul for swag&#039;<\/li>\n<li>HBOS: A highly unusual fraud case<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Lloyds said it &quot;remains determined to get to the bottom of what happened in HBOS Reading and we share the Treasury Committee&#039;s desire for transparency&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;We welcome the statement by Nicky Morgan MP, chair of the Treasury Select Committee. We continue to support the FCA investigation and the separate, independent Dame Linda Dobbs review.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We will, of course, assist the Treasury Select Committee in its consideration of these matters and will fulfil any requests made to us, including provision of Dame Linda&#039;s review findings.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>&quot;Very serious consequences&quot;<\/h2>\n<p>The Project Lord Turnbull report was written in 2013 by a senior manager at Lloyds called Sally Masterton who was helping Thames Valley Police with inquiries into the fraud at HBOS&#039;s office in Reading.<\/p>\n<p>Mrs Masterton came across new information raising concerns about a cover-up of the fraud.<\/p>\n<p>After relaying her concerns to a senior executive, who asked her to write-up her findings, Mrs Masterton produced the report. <\/p>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  Getty Images                                                    <\/figure>\n<p>Its executive summary said: &quot;Concealment set in motion a course of events that has had and continues to have far-reaching and very serious consequences, extending to the Lloyds TSB takeover. LBG is significantly exposed.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>After writing a draft report and submitting its front section on 5 September 2013, Mrs Masterton was put on enforced leave on 23 September 2013. <\/p>\n<h2>&quot;The Reading incident&quot; <\/h2>\n<p>In May 2008, the government knew HBOS was running low on cash but wanted to avoid another nationalisation. HBOS executives proposed to raise money from the bank&#039;s shareholders to beef up its finances.<\/p>\n<p>However, in the prospectus for that fund-raising, which is meant to disclose all material financial information, there was no mention of a fraud. <\/p>\n<p>Mrs Masterton found emails showing HBOS executives didn&#039;t want to disclose their exposure to &quot;the Reading incident&quot; and discussed keeping it comfortably below a limit of 5% of net income from group continuing operations - or \u00a3285m.  <\/p>\n<p>Later that year Lloyds shareholders were asked to approve the purchase of HBOS.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the prospectus mentioned nothing about the fraud - nor about \u00a340bn pounds in &quot;stressed assets&quot; - loans where the bank might not get its money back. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright PA Investigators looking into allegations of a cover-up of a \u00a31bn pound fraud at HBOS have been told by MPs they must hand over their findings to parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}