BNP traders get a bad rap

Wall Street just can’t get enough of hip-hop sensation Salt-N-Pepa.

For a five-year period ending in August 2012, traders at BNP Paribas at times pilfered lyrics from the all-female rap group as code to direct raterigging activities with other traders, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.

When discussing one instance of rate-rigging in a messenger service, a trader evoked the lyrics of R&B singer Montell Jordan’s 1995 single. “This is how we do it here :-P,” the trader wrote.

“Push it real good,” another trader responded, in a reference to Salt-N-Pepa’s 1987 hit single.

The traders were focused on manipulating the US dollar International Swaps and Derivatives Fix, a benchmark rate, to benefit their derivative positions at settlement, the CFTC said.

The traders would submit “false” and “misleading” quotes to a brokerage firm that surveyed banks and published the average of the submissions as the daily rate.

“BNP Paribas, through its traders, bid, offered, and executed transactions … in a manner deliberately designed … to influence the published [rate] in order to benefit the bank,” James McDonald, director of enforcement for the CFTC, said in a statement.

BNP agreed to pay $90 million in civil monetary penalties to settle the charges.