Osborne promises a blank cheque to put bankers in the dock

GeORGe Osborne will today offer a blank cheque to fraud investigators seeking to bring bankers accused of rigging currency markets to justice.

The Chancellor will write to the Serious Fraud Office urging it to pursue a ‘blockbuster case’ against traders who clubbed together to fix foreign exchange (forex) rates.

Six banks were this week fined after it emerged City workers were making what they called ‘free money’ by fixing currency rates in the 60 seconds before the close of trading and then making huge cash transfers. Royal Bank of Scotland, hSBC, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, UBS and Bank of america were handed a total of £2.6billion in fines from regulators on both sides of the atlantic for the latest scam.

Regulators discovered that some of the manipulation of the £3trillion-a-day forex market was taking place even as the banks were being probed over a previous scandal over interbank lending rate libor.

The SFO is in the early stages of a major forex investigation. Funding for such probes – socalled ‘ blockbuster cases’ – is provided with agreement with the Treasury. it provided more than £10million to pursue crim-

Fined £2bn, so why aren’t crooked bankers in prison?

Yesterday’s Mail

inal wrongdoing in the libor scandal – and is expected to make a similar sum available f or t he l atest probe. Mr Osborne is expected to say: ‘We must continue to pursue criminal wrong-doing at the highest level; i have always made sure that the SFO has the funds it requires for its investigations.

‘i understand that the SFO is in the early stages of a major investigation into Forex trading. Given the importance of this work, the Treasury will provide the required funding for this investigation.’

deputy Prime Minister nick Clegg said the public was ‘seething’ at the latest scandal.

‘i hope [the SFO] will bring people to book,’ he told lBC Radio. ‘People are seething with anger that they’re having to endure cuts and savings for year after year after year because of not only irresponsible, in some cases possibly criminal, behaviour by bankers.’

Mr Clegg said it had not yet been decided what the Government would do with the £1.1billion of fines levied by the UK regulator. Fines over the libor rate scandal have been used to support military charities and other good causes.

in the latest scam, investigators f ound traders f ormed groups to help them manipulate currency exchange rates that would profit the banks at the expense of clients. Transcripts of conversations show how the traders referred to ‘free money’ and not wanting other ‘numpties’ in the market to know what they were doing.

as well as inflating profits for their banks, traders are suspected of using the scam to boost their bonuses.