BNP Paribas has pleaded guilty to fixing forex rates in the US and will pay a fine of $90m.
The French bank’s US unit had been charged with conspiring to fix prices for central and eastern European, Middle Eastern and African currencies traded in the US and elsewhere from September 2011 to July 2013, according to a court filing in Manhattan.
According to the US Justice Department, BNPP USA is the sixth major bank to plead guilty as a result of the department’s ongoing investigation into antitrust and fraud crimes in the FX market.
FDIC Inspector General Jay N. Lerner said:
“This guilty plea holds BNP Paribas accountable for its corrupt price-fixing behaviour which violated the integrity of the financial services industry and undermined competition.”
The alleged conspiracy involved manipulation of prices on an electronic forex trading platform through the creation of non-bona fide trades, co-ordination of bids and offers on that platform and agreements on currency prices to quote specific customers, among other conduct, according to the DoJ statement
US authorities said they and the bank have agreed to recommend no probation, “in light of, among other factors, the bank’s substantial efforts relating to compliance and remediation.”
BNPP USA also has agreed to co-operate with the government’s ongoing criminal investigation into the FX market. The bank said in a statement on Friday:
BNP Paribas USA deeply regrets the past misconduct that led to this settlement, which was a clear breach of the high standards on which it operates. Conducting its business in a responsible and ethical manner is a cornerstone of BNP Paribas’ values and the Group will continue to make improvements to ensure that it delivers on its responsibilities to all its stakeholders.
The DoJ added that the bank’s admission follows a guilty plea last year by one of its former CEEMEA traders, Jason Katz, along with those of traders from other institutions.
BNP Paribas has a history of forex related run-ins with US authorities.
In May, the bank was hit with a $350m fine by New York’s state banking regulator, which found a long pattern of “nearly unfettered misconduct” in the bank’s foreign exchange trading business.
The Department of Financial Services accused traders at France’s biggest bank of colluding with rivals to manipulate forex prices and benchmark rates, carrying out fake trades and improperly sharing details on customer orders with traders at other big banks.
And in July it was slapped with another fine over its foreign-exchange trading business, paying the Federal Reserve Board $246m after the regulator found “deficiencies” in its oversight and internal controls of traders in the unit.
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