5 banks face lawsuit over Australia foreign exchange scandal

Bloomberg

Citigroup Inc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are among five banks named in a class action lawsuit in Australia seeking damages for colluding on foreign-exchange trading strategies.
UBS Group AG and Barclays Plc were also named in the suit lodged on Monday in the Federal Court by Maurice Blackburn Lawyers. The action claims the banks colluded to rig foreign exchange rates, boosting profits at the expense of Australian businesses and investors, the law firm said in a statement.
Spokespeople at Citi and JPMorgan in Sydney and Barclays in Hong Kong had no immediate comment on the suit. UBS didn’t return a call seeking comment. RBS didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry outside of regular business hours in London, where it is a public holiday.
Citi, RBS, JPMorgan and Barclays were among five lenders that agreed to pay European Union fines totaling 1.07 billion euros ($1.2 billion) earlier this month for colluding on foreign exchange strategies. UBS escaped a fine because it was the first to tell regulators about the collusion.
Traders allegedly used chat rooms bearing names such as “The Cartel,” “The Bandits’ Club,” and “The Mafia,” and communicated directly with each other to coordinate the manipulation of FX benchmark rates, control the pricing of spreads and to trigger client stop-loss orders and limit orders, Maurice Blackburn said.
The manipulation of benchmark foreign-exchange rates was exposed in 2013 via Bloomberg stories, triggering regulatory probes in the US, the UK and Switzerland.