(New York) The Swiss bank UBS has reached an agreement with American justice to close, in exchange for the payment of 1.45 billion dollars, civil lawsuits for fraud related to the sale of toxic “subprime” financial products to the origin of the 2008 financial crisis.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement on Monday that this transaction put an end to the last lawsuits it initiated after the crisis, collecting more than 36 billion dollars from some twenty banks, agencies of rating or lending organizations.
The Swiss bank indicated, in a separate statement announcing this agreement related to acts that occurred in 2006-2007, that the sum had already been fully provisioned in its accounts.
The procedure was launched in November 2018 by the American justice system, the result of the investigative work of an ad hoc group within it which examined the conduct of banks and other entities and their role in the design and sale of securities. secured by residential mortgages (mortgage backed security, RMBS).
RMBS are financial securities backed by risky mortgages that large banks have sold to large investors and other small and medium-sized financial institutions. Defaults by the households that took out the loans led to a cascade of charges and provisions in the global financial sector and, ultimately, to the 2008 crisis.
“This agreement represents accountability for those who thought they were above the law,” said Ryan Buchanan, attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, quoted in the DoJ statement, saying UBS’s behavior had “played a important role in the causes of the financial crisis that affected millions of Americans”.
The US lawsuit accused UBS of “knowingly making false and misleading statements to purchasers” of these financial products and of “committing fraud against investors in connection with the sale of 40 RMBS in 2006 and in 2007”.
Outre UBS, le département a aussi poursuivi Ally Financial, Aurora Loan Services, Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Moody’s, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard
In 2014, Bank of America reached a record $16.62 billion settlement to resolve civil lawsuits filed by the department and other federal and state agencies, including $7 billion in victim benefits. crisis. In 2013, JPMorgan set the previous record, with $13 billion.
Next come Deutsche Bank (7.2 billion), then Citigroup (7 billion), Credit Suisse (5.25 billion) and Goldman Sachs (5.06 billion), according to documents listed Monday by the ministry.
