S Africa grants Barclays Africa immunity in FX rigging probe

CAPE TOWN: South Africa’s Competition Commission has granted Barclays Africa conditional immunity from prosecution in return for its continuing cooperation in the rand currency trading probe, the head of the Commission said yesterday.

The Commission said last week it had found more than a dozen local and foreign banks colluded to coordinate trading in the rand and the US dollar using an instant chat room called “ZAR Domination”.

It recommended fines amounting to 10 percent of the banks’ South African revenues in a scandal that has piled political pressure on the country’s big four banks and raised questions about their dominance in Africa’s most industrialized economy. The local lenders have around a 90 percent market share of the South African banking market.

“We did, through the investigation, receive a leniency application from Barclays/ABSA which cooperated and gave us more information,” The head of the Commission Tembinkosi Bonakele told a parliamentary committee yesterday. “We have a conditional agreement with them on immunity but this is subject to confirmation depending on the extent of their cooperation.”

Barclays Africa Group, the regional subsidiary of Barclays Plc which includes the South African bank Absa, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Monday the Commission said that the local arm of Citigroup had agreed to pay a reduced $5 million penalty in settlement for its role in the alleged currency trading cartel after it “undertook to cooperate”. “I would say that the settlement was low, but as a prosecutor you sometimes have to make these calls because we have a bigger case to run,” Bonakele said yesterday, referring to Citi.

The scandal has rattled the share prices of the South African-listed banks, with the sector index having dropped by nearly 4 percent over the last four sessions.

The Commission began its investigation in April 2015, joining an international probe into the manipulation of foreign exchange rates that has led to big banks paying more than $10 billion in settlements. Former Citigroup foreign exchange dealer Christopher Cummins and Jason Katz, who worked at Barclays and later BNP Paribas SA, pleaded guilty in the United States to conspiring to fix currency prices last month.

Both, along with several others, are named in the South African regulator’s report on its investigation that has been referred to the Competition Tribunal, which holds hearings on antitrust matters before giving a ruling. Bonakele said the Commission was seeking a maximum penalty against other banks whose traders are alleged to have been involved in the scandal but the “door was not closed” for those seeking to apply for leniency in exchange for information that would help lead to a successful prosecution.

President Jacob Zuma said last week that the government would clamp down hard on financial market abuse. Other banks and brokerages named in the case were Nomura, Standard Bank, Investec, JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse Group, Commerzbank AG, Standard New York Securities Inc, Macquarie Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), ANZ Banking Group Ltd and Standard Chartered Plc. Investec has said it would seek to provide further information for the regulator in order to continue to cooperate.

Officials at Standard Bank, BAML, Commerzbank, BNP Paribas, Nomura, Credit Suisse, ANZ, Macquarie and Standard Chartered have so far declined to comment. The other banks have not responded to requests for comment. — Reuters