THE Supreme Court of Western Australia has ruled against a syndicate of 20 financiers, including three of the four major banks, in the Bell Group litigation saga, the longest-running civil trial in the nation. Justice Neville Owen found that the syndicate of Australian and international banks knew the Bell Group, run at the time by entrepreneur Alan Bond, was almost insolvent but did not engage in any "conscious wrongdoing" or dishonesty in accepting loans to keep it afloat.