Forex lands banks in hot water

recommendations in this regard. Among these were proposed amendments to regulations to give the Financial Services Board powers to declare a draft code of conduct drawn up for the foreign exchange market a subsidiary legislation.

Among other rules, the code of conduct required dealers to adhere to strict confidentiality requirements and banned the use of personal, unmonitored mobile devices from the dealing room.

It also has a zero-tolerance policy to rigging benchmarks used for valuations.

The Treasury said at the time that the code of conduct would be put into effect through the Financial Sector Regulation Bill.

The recommendations also included amending sections of the Financial Markets Act relating to insider trading, market manipulation and false reporting to make them applicable to the foreign exchange market.

“A number of these recommendations are currently being implemented,” said Sikhakhane. “At the conclusion of the review, transactions and it was stated that should any irregularities be revealed as part of the Competition Commission’s investigation, which link violations in other international financial centres to operations of local authorised dealers, the matters would be followed up and appropriate action would be taken by regulators.”

The Reserve Bank would allow the commission’s legal processes to conclude, while monitoring them to determine if it needed to take any action, Sikhakhane said.