$5trn-a-day Forex rigging probe dropped despite evidence of criminality

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said the material it had obtained provided “insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.”

“Whilst there were reasonable grounds to suspect the commission of offences involving serious or complex fraud, a detailed review of the available evidence led us to the conclusion that the alleged conduct, even if proven and taken at its highest, would not meet the evidential test required to mount a prosecution for an offence contrary to English law,” the financial watchdog said on Wednesday.

“It has further been concluded that this evidential position could not be remedied by continuing the investigation.”

‘Rogue traders’

Forex rigging was the most recent in a series of rate-rigging scandals to engulf the global financial sector. Criminal traders at some of the world’s biggest banks conspired to manipulate the multi-billion dollar market, while making handsome profits in the process.

They rigged the foreign currency trades via email and online chat rooms to the detriment of the companies and investors who had placed trust in them. The rogue traders then relayed instances where they bolstered their profits, while lobbying their managers for bigger bonuses.

The SFO has had little success in prosecuting financial crime in Britain, excluding the conviction of UBS trader Tom Hayes. The former financial trader is serving an 11-year jail sentence for conspiring to rig Libor interest rates and will return this week to a London court in a multimillion-pound case against prosecutors keen to seize his assets.

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