Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) executives were "criminal" to pay themselves bonuses even as insolvency and a taxpayer-funded bailout loomed, says a fund manager.
Bosses of the tech industry bank testified before senators on Wednesday on its collapse in March.
The federal government was forced to step in amid a run by depositors after SVB admitted its investment portfolio of Treasury bonds had lost value thanks to the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates uin a bid to tackle inflation.
Aquiles Larrea told Sputnik it was "funny" that the SVB executives had admitted paying themselves bonuses even when the "writing's on the wall" that the bank was going insolvent.
"It's a borderline criminal thing that occurred," he stressed. "It's insane to me that you can go take a bonus while your bank is about to go under."
"Part of me thinks, you know what? If I was at that level, I might be thinking the same thing" Larrea said. "Doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean that what you did doesn't have consequences."
But, he conceded, "I don't think they'll see any consequences," adding: "How do you prove what someone knew beforehand?"
The wealth fund manager said the SVB collapse was a "good old run on the bank" updated with 21st-century online banking technology.
"People forget the run on the bank is not people going to the bank and saying, I want to take all my money out," Larrea explained. "It is them online right now pulling their funds and their savings in that manner to the highest possible degree possible."
He said SVB executives were watching those trends and looking for "someone who's going to back us [or] buy us."
That was "just crazy behavior or arrogant behavior on the part of the banks directors," Larrea said, "acting as if they didn't know what was going on, when... the public as a whole believes they knew what was going on."
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