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Lawyers cast doubt over banking jail threat
A plan to clamp down on reckless London bankers with threats of prison time may fail to have any real effect, city lawyers have claimed.
Bankers behind bars?
Mayer Brown litigation partner Alistair Graham told City AM that the Banking Commission’s plan could miss the mark as it will be very difficult to prove ‘recklessness’.
Motives
The lawyer said: ‘It seems extraordinarily difficult to imagine that an offence of reckless misconduct in the management of a bank will be successful… as a criminal offence it will have to be proved beyond all reasonable doubt.’
Other city-based lawyers have also expressed doubt over the scheme and questioned its motives.
Michael Isaacs – head of banking litigation at Pinsent Masons – said the idea has ‘more than a whiff of playing to the gallery’, referring to the general public wanting to see ‘banged up bankers’.
