What was a significant issue related to the Libor scandal?

The Libor scandal primarily revolved around the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), which is a benchmark interest rate that affects a wide array of financial products and services globally. Banks were found to have intentionally misreported their borrowing costs to either inflate or deflate the Libor rate. This manipulation allowed them to create a false perception of their financial health or to gain unfair advantages in trading and borrowing costs. As a result, this significantly undermined the integrity of financial markets and led to widespread financial loss for many investors and institutions.

While the other options mention serious ethical and financial concerns, they do not directly relate to the specifics of the Libor scandal. Deliberate mismanagement of vendor payments and self-dealing among financial officers, for instance, pertain to different aspects of corporate governance and ethics but are not central to the interest rate manipulations that characterized the Libor issue. Similarly, recording nonexistent revenues touches on a different type of accounting fraud that was not a key component of the Libor manipulations. Thus, the incorrectness of those options highlights that the essence of the scandal lay specifically in the fraudulent manipulation of interest rates to benefit certain banks and stakeholders.