"...our normal expectations are subverted and we start to suspect everyone and everything, including our own judgement"

"Fraud surveys always warn that they are an underestimation"

"Stopping fraud is about spotting the right clues"

It is not the financial loss which hurts, it is the betrayal.

That is why fraud has the potential to chill the blood. We assume that most people are reasonably honest — it is the only way to live out all aspects of our lives, including our commercial relationships. When our assumptions— that we could trust that business partner — are smashed, our normal expectations are subverted and we start to suspect everyone and everything, including our own judgement.

That is why the LIBOR scandal was so shocking. It is a decade ago - during the global financial crisis- that the alarm was raised that banks were deliberately submitting dishonestly low interbank rates. This was not some technicality, this was a global benchmark for interest rates on everything from credit cards to trillions of dollars in financial derivatives. LIBOR was an institution, part of the very fabric of the global market system. If you could not trust LIBOR then what was left to trust? Gold, the bond market, the foreign exchange market- all have been subject to claims that they have been manipulated at some time and in some way.

But perhaps personal betrayal is more painful than institutions letting us down. Corrupt bankers — helped by a so-called turnaround consultancy — deliberately loaded companies with unmanageable debt before taking control and stripping the assets, in a scheme that the judge in the court case said 'ripped apart' the victims. Strong words but hardly an exaggeration in trying to sum the damage that had been done not only to businesses but also to lives.

Peter Williams