Four banks to plead guilty, pay $2.5B for manipulating global currency market

World Today

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, accompanied by Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, Antitrust Division, speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Wednesday, May 20, 2015, where is was announced that four big banks will pay $2.5 billion in fines and plead guilty to criminally manipulating global currency market going back to 2007. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Four big banks will pay $2.5 billion in fines and plead guilty to criminally manipulating the global currency markets going back to 2007.

JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays, and The Royal Bank of Scotland agreed to plead guilty to felony anti-trust violations. The banks conspired with one another to fix rates on U.S. dollars and euros traded in the huge global market for currencies, according to a settlement announced on Wednesday between the banks and the US Justice Department.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced the fines Wednesday, calling their actions a “brazen display of collusion in foreign exchange rate market manipulation”.

The fines are the largest set of anti-trust fines ever obtained in the history of the Department of Justice, Lynch said.

Currency traders allegedly shared customer orders through chat rooms and used that information to profit ahead of their clients.

Story by the Associated Press