Five more banks added to long-running forex cartel case
The Competition Commission has also provided detail about how all the banks rigged trades in the rand-dollar currency pair
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 fi...
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