WHAT ABOUT THE BANKERS?

Banks are just brick and mortar institutions created on paper by a group of persons unknown. Yet, when it comes to wrong doing these entities, and not the people who created them are held responsible for the crimes their creators commit.  

Some of the world’s biggest banks have agreed to pay out $4.3 billion to settle an investigation into their alleged rigging of foreign exchange rates. Barclays, the first to settle in the Libor case, is still hoping to strike a deal.

The banks are accused of tampering with currency interbank rates on the largely unregulated $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. Bankers worked together and sent secret signals to manipulate the important currency benchmarks to boost bank profits.

READ MORE: Swiss watchdog probes 8 banks over currency rate manipulations

"The setting of a benchmark rate is not simply another opportunity for banks to earn a profit. Countless individuals and companies around the world rely on these rates to settle financial contracts, and this reliance is premised on faith in the fundamental integrity of these benchmarks," Aitan Goelman, Director of Enforcement at CFTC, said in a press release on

UBS, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, and Bank of America all reached settlements, but Barclays, the UK’s biggest bank, is reportedly in talks with individual regulators.

Citigroup agreed to pay $1.02 billion to three regulators in the US and UK, and JPMorgan will pay out nearly $1 billion to settle the matter.

Switzerland’s UBS was given a fine of $800 million, Royal Bank of Scotland was fined $634 million, and HBSC $618 million. Bank of America will have to pay $250 million.


Banks fined record $4.3 bn for corrupting integrity of currency trading