Law-enforcement officials in the UK are investigating whether efforts to prop up Britain’s financial system at the onset of the financial crisis may have been rigged.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office said on Wednesday it is examining material passed to it by the Bank of England following a BOE enquiry into emergency cash auctions dating from 2007 and 2008, when the central bank stepped in with billions of pounds of short-term loans for banks shut out of day-to-day funding markets.