The 2008 global financial crisis and the worldwide recession that it left in its wake engendered a feeling and great injustice among people across the world. The financial crash directly caused significant hardship to people from all over the globe who have forced face austerity measures and reduced employed while trillions of dollars were poured into propping up the banks who had caused the crisis. It appeared to the world that ordinary people were being made to suffer while the guilty were allowed to continue unhindered and unharmed. However, this might not be the case any longer.

Finally, bankers to go on trial in the UK

Following Iceland’s high-profile prosecutions of criminal bankers, the United Kingdom is to go ahead with its trials into the bankers that contributed to the financial crash. The first group to go on trial are a collection of individuals associated with the collapsed bank HBOS. Two former managers and six other defendants have been charged with fraudulent trading, money laundering and corruption.

The defendants were initially charged in 2013 but bringing the case to court was a frustrating process for the prosecuting lawyers in the CPS who faced a long series of delays. Now they will argue to the court that the former managers received money and high-quality gifts from others from within their organisation and their families to procure financial favours. The allegations stem from a two-year-old investigation by the Thames Valley Police in a dedicated operation which was code-named Operation Hornet.

This is not the first scandal that the troubled bank has endured. The head of corporate lending, Peter Cummings was one of the first bankers to face the music following the crash of 2008. Cummings was fined £500,000 for misconduct and was barred from working in the banking industry again. The bank collapsed in 2008 and was swallowed by the UK-based bank, Lloyds TSB.

It is hoped that the trial, which will be heard at Southwark Crown Court, will open the floodgates and will be only the first in many criminal charges brought against bankers in the UK and, indeed, across the world.