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Speaker 1: And now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief,

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Speaker 1: exploring legal issues in the news. Today, Bloomberg Law host

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Speaker 1: tod In Grasso discusses fraud charges against four former Barclay's

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Speaker 1: executives over the bank's two thousand eight capital raising from Gutar.

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Speaker 1: She speaks to Robert Hockett, a professor at Cornell University

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Speaker 1: Law School. Bob the UK's Serious Fraud Office said the

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Speaker 1: charges related to the two fundraisings the bank embarked on

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Speaker 1: in June and October of two thousand eight. Tell us

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Speaker 1: more about this. Essentially, this is a really fascinating case,

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Speaker 1: even that kind of morbidly so. So the SFO or

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Speaker 1: the Serious Fraud Office, is being fairly quiet about what

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Speaker 1: the precise nature of the charges are and what the

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Speaker 1: precise predicate offenses are. But it appears that the SFO

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Speaker 1: is in effect validating a set of rumors that have

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Speaker 1: been going around for quite some time, really ever since

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and the rumors are to the

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Speaker 1: effect that what Barkley's did was it in order to

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Speaker 1: raise up its capital levels, it actually extended loans to

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Speaker 1: certain people in Cutter who then used the loan proceeds

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Speaker 1: to purchase equity stakes in Berkeley. So it's a kind

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Speaker 1: of bootstrapping form of capital raising, might say, and maybe

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Speaker 1: needless to say that sort of circumvents the very purpose

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Speaker 1: of capital raising in the first place. Uh. And in consequence,

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Speaker 1: it's of course illegal amounts to something fraudulent. Now, again

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Speaker 1: we don't know for certain that that actually happened, but

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Speaker 1: it's been rumored for a long time, and what the

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Speaker 1: SFO has told us so far sort of suggests that

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Speaker 1: they have found substance in those particular rumors. The SFO

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Speaker 1: has an uneven record um securing convictions against bankers. Will

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Speaker 1: this be a sort of a test case for it? Uh,

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Speaker 1: it might end up being a test case. And it's

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Speaker 1: also looking a bit like it might be a kind

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Speaker 1: of test case in another way, And that is, as

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Speaker 1: you guys might know, Theresa May, the Prime Minister in Britain,

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Speaker 1: has been talking for some time of sort of folding

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Speaker 1: the SFO into some other agency, essentially eliminating it as

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Speaker 1: a distinct entity. Uh. And it's possible that SFOs announcing

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Speaker 1: these charges now could be viewed as a way of

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Speaker 1: sort of showing the world that they actually aren't quite relevant,

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Speaker 1: and that it wouldn't be a great idea for May

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Speaker 1: to fold them into some other agency. And that is

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Speaker 1: Robert Hockaday, professor at Cornell University Law School, speaking to

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law host Jun Gresso. You can listen to Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Law weekdays at one pm Wall Street Time here on

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio and Now among the top legal stories from

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has hired a

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Speaker 1: longtime friend to be his personal attorney in the midst

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Speaker 1: of expanding investigations into Russian meddling in last year's election.

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Speaker 1: Charles Cooper as chairman of the Washington firm Cooper and Kirk.

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Speaker 1: He says he began representing Sessions a few days before

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Speaker 1: the Attorney General testified last week in front of the

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Speaker 1: Senate Intelligence Committee. A federal judges to managed to know

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Speaker 1: about the just This Department investigation of an FBI agent

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Speaker 1: implicated in an insider trading probe. Special Agent David Choves

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Speaker 1: is being investigated for leaks of grand jury information. The

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Speaker 1: leaks came in the case of Las Vegas gambler Billy Walters,

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Speaker 1: who was convicted of making forty three million dollars from

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Speaker 1: an insider scheme, and that's this morning's Bloomberg Law briefew

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Speaker 1: can find more legal news at Bloomberg law dot com

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Speaker 1: and Bloomberg Bena dot com. Attorneys will find an exceptional

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Speaker 1: legal research and business development tools there as well. Visit

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg law dot com and Bloomberg BNA dot com for

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Speaker 1: more information