It does not matter that the statement was invented.

It matters more.

Half a dozen of those people were club members.

Some of them do have commercial banking relationships, with other institutions, that they had no intention of discussing in a ballroom.

A financial services firm does not get to have an employee stand on a stage and imply anything at all about who owes it money, ever, under any circumstances, and the fact that none of it was real is not a defence; it is a second problem.

He was interviewed on the Tuesday.