the difference. there for the public and banks were complicit committing bank fraud . my name is richard cohen. i was senior vice president and business chief underwriter for citigroup. at the time citi group was the largest bank and. it was my responsibility to make sure that the $90000000000.00 a year that we were purchasing were going to loans that were originally aided by other banks and mortgage companies these maps are policy standards.

in early 2006. i discovered that over 60 percent of these mortgages did not meet our guidelines they were by definition defective when i discovered this in this was june of 2006. silly me i thought it was my job i started issuing warnings because i was supposed to make sure that these met our policy guidelines and i sent e-mail i put it in my weekly report i made committee presentations i mean i'm not a shy guy i cornered people in the hallways at the water fountain and everyone say yeah yeah we we we know we need to fix that but nothing would happen. and through 20062007 the volumes kept

increasing and the rate of defective mortgages increased from 60 to in excess of 80 percent it was 80 percent of these mortgages that we were in turn selling. and giving our representations and warranties that they were they met our policy guidelines did not meet our policy guidelines this is misrepresentation that is true as a matter of fact it was for all. i've seen plenty of alone documents with my own eyes that were falsified and the borrower still signed them as if they were correct. people who were typically hairdressers gardeners and such reporting incomes of over $100000.00 a year now their actual incomes would be in the range of about $16000.00 in those

cases their income is inflated by it 6 times. you would have waiters in a restaurant showing that they made $150000.00 a year i mean that clearly is. is out of line but nonetheless the loan type permitted them to happen. richard bowen and his staff very carefully very professionally are documenting. that these loans their reps and warranties are false. but city is overwhelmingly turning around in reselling these loans. citi group did not want to know because if it looked ringback at these places it couldn't possibly continue . to use them. it was all about generating the

revenue. the people who worked on wall street conceived of the idea of securitizing mortgages. packaging mortgages up into securities they actually arranged to buy the mortgages they would pack of them up into securities they would file documents with the security exchange commission that they had to be able to call them securities and then they would sell them to investors all around the world and all along the way they were making money was almost like it was a perfect product that anybody who touched a mortgage i made money off of it. november the 2nd of 2007 sitting at my kitchen table i put together an e-mail. and i simply e-mailed to robert reuben who the next day on sunday at the board meeting was named chairman of the board. i also sent it to

the chief risk officer the chief financial officer in the chief ordered. i said urgent read a meeting at work financial issues i put that in all capital letters. i call for an outside investigation i said come in here from the outside and investigate what is going on here because everybody here already knows and no one contact. throughout november through the summer there was no contact no one said it. will tell you that that particular point in time. before i would even get in my car. i was doing what they do in the books i'm looking

underneath my car and good luck. it was a very frightening time. said you worry the 6th i received there was an e-mail that went out with regard to reorganization. and in that reorganization i was stripped of all my underwriting responsibilities that next week i was put on the ministry to believe and told him not to come back to the.

base is a dialogue reading about it for not essence staying at an international meet and on t.v. a pressure to stop its composition with skepticism because there's a lot of it on my and everyone has a voice we'll being taken advantage of just because you know small community without any network just each health join the global conversation announces iraq all they want to do is start the debate the same kind of debate that we have here in st. the latest news as it breaks communities may be in disagreement accusing the other for these attacks and the chilling with details coverage thousands of protesters have been streaming away from here to go home but crowds have been steady dog from around the world sacrifice he said would have to be. bad the brunt of those sacrifices is what this is all about.

they wanted 43000000000 pounds with a weapon that was 6000000000 in commission. there is no hope of ending more because there is all. goodness. in essence we in the united states have privatized the ultimate public function your shadow on al-jazeera. you will shields that i'm still rob and these are all top news stories senior white house advisor. has unveiled the economic policy of the u.s.

middle east peace plan and he says it's the opportunity of the century for palestinians but palestinian leaders have already rejected the plan and the boy causing the gathering by direct message to the palestinian people is that despite what those who have let you down in the past tell you president trump and america have not given up on you this workshop is for you the vision we developed and released if executed correctly will lead to a better future for the palestinian people a future of dignity prosperity and opportunity you can change your course for the positive if we are willing to try new things and think outside the traditional box . the south of representatives has approved a $4500000000.00 aid package to address surging numbers of asylum seekers coming across the mexican border the bill includes new stand ins for migrants in custody following reports of children being held in extremely poor conditions the acting

head of the u.s. border protection agency has resigned amid the outcry. the u.n. says the world is on calls for what it calls climate apartheid where the rich buy their way out of the effects of global warming or the paul bear the brunt the u.n. investigator warns that hundreds of millions will face food insecurity disease and death. hundreds of protesters of marched across hong kong gathering in various foreign government offices they're part of ongoing demonstrations against a bill allowing the extradition to mayville and china the border between panama and costa rica has been rocked by a strong $6.00 magnitude earthquake the shallow quake struck just over an hour west ago of the city of david the u.s. geological survey says it has the potential to cause significant damage. the us president has threatened iran with. donald trump made the comment on twitter to the iranian president suggested the white house was idiotic for imposing new sanctions

on supreme leader ayatollah ali khamenei former u.s. special counsel robert miller will publicly testify before 2 congressional committees next month will issued a report in april on russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election those are the headlines about with more news in half an hour here on al-jazeera do stay with us. july on al-jazeera will the conservative new democracy be victorious in the snap elections we bring you the latest as greece quotes a new documentary examines the use of modern technology and policing its impact on individual rights and civil society on the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 lunar landing we look back at the 1st human steps. and an ancient factual pano disappears in gaza a stunning ocular tickle mystery unfolds on witness 2nd round of democratic presidential candidate debates in the us will be mined in detroit july on

al-jazeera. greed was definitely the driver. as it is almost for a lot untold. citigroup's was not the only one. of comparable level of fraudulent mortgage loans have been seen in all the big wall street banks. and knowing the risk of bankruptcy. banks began to pour vast amount of money to buy more and more mortgage loans and package them into derivatives. the top honor writer in the peak years a few 1005 in 2006 limited growth. at $106000000000.00. lehmann was one of the largest

makers and sellers of the the absolute most toxic loans in the entire world lehman brothers was one of the largest fraud vectors in the history of the world. my name is an time valukas. i go by the name tony. in the year 2009 about 3 months after the lehman bankruptcy i was appointed by the federal court in new york to act as an examiner. i was independent of any of the parties in among the responsibilities the court charged me and my team with was to determine how and why lehman went into

bankruptcy and when you're talking about the lehman bankruptcy you are talking about the largest single bankruptcy in the history of financial institutions total amount of the bankruptcy $693000000000.00. so we told the story of what happened. lehman brothers with the 4th largest global investment bank in the world. that by themis c.e.o. dick fuld. hi my name is dick fuld the chairman and chief executive officer of lehman brothers now is a terrific time to be joining lehman brothers i've been here 30 years and i can't think of a better time to take part in changes in opportunities that are going to. affect a do you get food what would be the 1st thing that for us human. a person who

was viewed as a lion on wall street i believe that in the year 2008 the very year of the bankruptcy was named by forbes as one of the top 10 executives in the country. they call them the gorilla and i think they call them that for a reason he was brusque borish take no prisoners kind of guy you know run through a wall for lehman brothers. hypercompetitive. the stick. squeeze some of those shorts squeeze him hard. not that i want to hurt him. don't get that please because that's just not who i am . soft i'm lovable. but what i really want to do

is i want to reach in ripped out their heart and eat it before they die the man who lost them and brothers the man who presided over its decline and fall the man who could have done something about it but chose not to the man who refused to see the writing on the wall the man who you know. kicked off in many ways which became the great recession. my name is all over buddha and i was an in-house lawyer at lehman brothers for years. i discovered many things that were at least unethical. if not illegal. and eventually i decided to quit. i was earning a lot of money. but it was not enough for me to turn a blind eye to all that was happening in. the tone coming from the

top didn't fuld the guys around him or go for pushing go beyond the limits the key at lehman was to evaluate the risk and the reward and never mind the law that might be in between there if if the reward is high enough and the risk is low enough we will do it and we will sort it out later. this was a culture of risk. and this was all about money. lehman brothers risk analysis program was considered a model on wall street i mean it was brilliantly conceived. the problem was it was simply ignored you have to understand you talk about to pull folks made his fortune at lehman brothers he was a billionaire. so if you say what i think he had a wrong it ask you are you a billionaire if you made a $1000000000.00 trading i you and he had.

in the years leading up to the crisis everything the financial health of lehman brothers could not have been better at least on paper. they expanded the use of their toxic the rules. and the ratio of lending expanded. in 2008 demons was massively leveraged. lehman brothers had one of the highest leverage ratios in american financial institutions a leverage ratio is a ratio of your debt to your equity another word for equity is capital it's ratio depending on the exact time was 30 to $40.00 to $1.00 in other words for every

dollar of suppose a capital that had it had $30.00 to $40.00 in debt. lehman became the focus of worldwide attention because they were perceived as the next weakest link they were the next domino to fall. so lehman is engaged in a scheme. a accounting scheme to make it look better and what they did was involved is what was called repo 105. this was something that lehman used every quarter to hide some of the borrowed money.