Ripped Off

Bankers have escaped scot free from causing the austerity that has brought misery to millions and prompted the worst pay freeze in 200 years, according to the Resolution Foundation. Compounding the harm, they have paid themselves £100billion in bonuses since 2008 and now the 71 per cent state owned bank RBS has spent more than £1bn of largely taxpayers money to protect its directors from the scrutiny of cross examination in the witness box. Ripped Off! says ‘Enough is Enough’. We call for action to bring bank main board directors to account in the dock. We propose, further, a number of urgent policy recommendations to force reform of the corrupt culture of the banking sector. Principle among those recommendations is a demand for so-called ‘failure to prevent’ legislation that will hold main board directors to account. The banking sector threatens to plunge us into yet another financial crisis and people are sick of the injustice that sees the weight of banker crookery falling upon the shoulders of bank victims, tax-payers and those ordinary people who comprise the general electorate, whilst the bankers themselves wallow in untold wealth.