Carney faces grilling by MPs on market rigging scandal

BANK of England governor Mark Carney will be drawn into the growing scandal over currency manipulation on Tuesday when MPs allege the Bank’s governance has been inadequate.

Carney will answer questions from the Treasury Select Committee, alongside executive director of markets Paul Fisher.

The Bank is facing questions over its closeness to foreign exchange dealers and whether it tacitly condoned manipulation of the market, amid a widening regulatory probe of currency trading.

A staff member at the Bank was suspended last week over the affair. The Bank said that an extensive review of documents, emails and other records has to date found no evidence that staff colluded in any way in manipulating the foreign exchange market or in sharing confidential client information.

It added: ‘However, the Bank requires its staff to follow rigorous internal control processes and has today suspended a member of staff, pending investigation by the Bank into compliance with those processes.’

MPs are concerned that the review may not have been sufficiently independent, and that the Bank’s non-executives should have been in charge of any investigation. The committee’s chairman Andrew Tyrie said: ‘There is a strong case that the non executives in the Bank should have taken the initiative on this from the moment the need for external assistance was considered.

‘That was last October, possibly earlier.’