Well they'd have to be pretty stupid to put it in writing, given that it was against the rules. It seems to me a shame that people lower down the chain, who di

Well they'd have to be pretty stupid to put it in writing, given that it was against the rules. It seems to me a shame that people lower down the chain, who didn't stand to personally profit from the manipulation are going to be the only ones to take the fall for this. The suggestion that the rate fixer acted independently to manipulate the rates, even though he will have known that he risked prosecution as a result, just isn't credible to me. It's obvious that general banks + BoE colluded to fix a rate that was meant to be based on the realities of lending, and that they did so either to make more money (in the case of the general banks) or to instill confidence in the banking system (in the case of BoE). Whilst there may not be enough evidence to prosecute, it seems wishful thinking to say that the BoE didn't know that people might take their wishes and translate them into effectively illegal actions. The point of Libor was that it was meant to be a reflection of bank's actual rates, so any pressure for lower rates inevitably is pressure to cook the books, and the BoE staff involved will have known that.