DOJ Announces Indictment of Former Derivatives Traders for Alleged LIBOR Manipulation

DOJ LIBOR

On June 2, the DOJ announced that a federal grand jury of the Southern District of New York indicted two former senior traders of an international investment bank for their alleged roles in a scheme to manipulate the U.S. Dollar London InterBank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Specifically, the former employees were charged with “one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud and nine counts of wire fraud for their participation in a scheme to manipulate the USD LIBOR rate in a manner that benefited their own or [the investment bank’s] financial positions in derivatives that were linked to those benchmarks.” According to allegations included in the indictment, as director of the Pool Trading Desk in New York and as director of the Money Market Derivatives (MMD) Desk in London, the two former senior traders directed subordinates and/or requested that colleagues “submit false and fraudulent LIBOR contributions consistent with the traders’ or the bank’s financial interests rather than the honest and unbiased costs of borrowing.” Chief U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of the SDNY has been assigned to the case.