Brown fears ‘rogue bankers’ could trigger a new crisis
GORDON BROWN has warned that “rogue bankers” could cause another financial crash because the failure to imprison them after the last crisis meant it is “inevitable” they would start gambling again with public money.
In his memoirs – titled My Life, Our Times, published next week – the former Prime Minister warned the “mistakes of the past have not been heeded” and bankers who act fraudulently must be jailed, banned and their assets confiscated.
He questioned how Fred Goodwin, the former boss of RBS, could walk away with his past bonuses “untouched”, a tax-free lump sum of £5million and a £300,000-a-year pension after the bank had to be bailed out.
Querying why there were no criminal prosecutions, unlike in other countries, he said “little has changed” since the 2008 crisis other than that “the banks that were deemed ‘too big to fail’ are now even bigger than they were”.
Mr Brown said: “If bankers who act fraudulently are not put in jail ...we will only give a green light to similar riskladen behaviour in new forms.”