The international financial crisis caused an earthquake whose aftershocks can still be seen in economies around the world in the form of worse living conditions for several generations of workers. Not all of them are there, but over two decades Justice has put behind bars several of those responsible for that earthquake and for some of the great scams that sought to perpetuate that system.
The latest was the founder of the Chinese real estate giant Evergrande, Xu Jiayin, sentenced this Thursday to life imprisonment and to hand over all his assets as guilty of various crimes such as falsifying financial information, fraudulent issuance of shares, bribery or embezzlement.
Xu Jiayin (Evergrande): life sentence
The man who until not long ago was the richest man in China has been sentenced to life imprisonment, his political rights have been stripped for life and all his assets have been confiscated, after being found guilty of multiple crimes, including misappropriation, fundraising fraud, illegal disclosure of confidential information and corporate bribery. The bankruptcy of Evergrande in 2021, which accumulated a hole of 300 billion dollars, continues to hit China five years later.
Xu, 67 years old and of humble origins, was raised by his grandmother and came to be considered a symbol as the founder of the largest real estate empire in China and one of the largest in the world. He accumulated a net worth of $42.5 billion, according to the Chinese version of Forbes. The fall of Evergrande - the real estate company sold off-plan apartments that were never built - left more than 1.5 million families without their homes and without their life savings.
Bernard Madoff: 150 years in prison
As such, he was not one of those responsible for the financial crisis, but he was responsible for fueling its darker side, having orchestrated the largest pyramid scam in history. The American banker Bernard Madoff, who died in prison in 2021 at the age of 82, was sentenced to 150 years in prison for it. For two decades he defrauded thousands of investors of nearly $68 billion until his arrest in December 2008, at the worst moment of the recession caused by the real estate bubble.
The collapse of his empire was one of the great symbols of that crisis. Thousands of individuals lost all their assets in that scam, which also affected pension funds, charitable foundations (such as that of film director Steven Spielberg) and large international banks (HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland...) and conglomerates such as the Japanese Nomura.
Allen Stanford: 110 years in prison
The authorities uncovered his scam a few weeks after the 'Madoff case' broke out and that allowed him to go somewhat more unnoticed in the media. The American investor Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison for the second largest pyramid scheme of the century, which amounted to more than 7 billion dollars - he sold that amount in certificates of deposits with unusually high interest rates - through the Stanford International Bank (SIB), based in Antigua.
The financier was not only found guilty of fraud, but also of conspiracy to obstruct an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and conspiracy to launder money, among other crimes. Its network, which affected clients from 131 countries, caused a real economic earthquake on the island.
The case of the bankers imprisoned in Iceland
Iceland took it very seriously that those responsible for the financial crisis in their country would pay for it. The country refused to bail out its three big banks (Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir) with public money when they collapsed in 2008, amid strong citizen protests. Around forty executives of those entities were sentenced to more than one hundred years in prison for fraud, market abuse, stock manipulation and fraudulent operations.
Among all the names, that of Hreidar Már Sigurdsson stood out, who was responsible between 2003 and 2008 for Kaupthing, until then the largest financial entity in the country. In his case, he was convicted along with other colleagues for prolonged market manipulation, embezzlement and violation of trust taxes.
Kareem Serageldin (Credit Suisse): 30 months
