The Competition Commission has added five other banks to its foreign exchange (forex) cartel case, and for the first time provided detail about how they all rigged trades in the rand-dollar currency pair.
On Friday, the Competition Tribunal released the commission’s latest affidavit in the long-running case, which shows that five new banks have now been included as respondents. They are HSBC Bank US, a subsidiary of the US arm of the UK bank; Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith, the security brokerage subsidiary of the Bank of America; Bank of America National Association; Investec’s banking subsidiary, and Credit Suisse Securities (US).
The affidavit also addresses criticism from the accused banks that the commission’s allegations were “vague and embarrassing”, and that the claims failed to advance evidence that traders used text and telephonic communications to collude with one another.
In legal papers lodged during the nearly one-year-old case, which has so far netted a R69.5m fine from Citigroup, Investec said the commission repeatedly referred to conversations on the Bloomberg messaging platform but failed to provide records of these messages.
The commission did so in the affidavit released on Friday.
In one example, the commission illustrated how a trader from BNP Paribas and three other traders representing Barclays Capital, Citigroup and JP Morgan used the Bloomberg chatroom to discuss posting offers designed to drive prices down. The BNP Paribas trader said he was skewing his trades lower.
“This conduct constitutes a breach of … the [Competition] Act,” said Mfundo Ngobese, an inspector in the cartels division of the commission.
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