Citicorp, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and three other global banking giants have agreed to plead guilty to U.S. felony charges for rigging foreign currency exchange rates and pay a total of nearly $5.7 billion in fines as part of settlements announced Wednesday by U.S. and European officials.
The banks, which also include Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS, "for years participated in a brazen display of collusion,” said Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch.
“The penalty all these banks will now pay is fitting considering the long-running and egregious nature of their anti-competitive conduct,” she said at a Washington news conference.
“It is commensurate with the pervasive harm done. And it should deter competitors in the future from chasing profits without regard to fairness, to the law or to the public welfare,” she said.
The banks agreed to what the Justice Department called three years of “corporate probation” that would include federal court supervision and regular reporting to authorities to determining that the firms had ended “all criminal activity.”
The agreements do not prevent the Justice Department from prosecuting executives and other employees at the banks for the illegal activity.
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