‘A former trader at Royal Bank of Scotland has become the first UK banker to be arrested on suspicion of rigging the £3.5trillion a day foreign exchange market.
City of London police and the Serious Fraud Office arrested the unnamed man at an address in Billericay in Essex on Friday morning.
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The SFO refused to give any more details, confirming only that an individual had been arrested in connection with one of its investigations.
But sources confirmed that the individual worked at RBS and was involved in the trading of foreign current rates.
Six banks, including RBS and HSBC, were fined a total of £2.6billion by UK and US regulators last month for their part in the racket.
Bankers, who called themselves the ‘A-Team’, ‘Three Musketeers’ and ‘The Players’ colluded online by sharing confidential information about clients’ currency orders to boost their bonuses.
Experts believe this is just the first of dozens of arrests, with many traders facing jail for a scandal widely believed to be even bigger than the recent ‘Libor’ interest rate-rigging scam.
The Serious Fraud Office launched a criminal investigation into the sprawling ‘Forex’ market in July but until now has made no arrests, despite around 30 bank staff sacked or suspended.’
Niamh Harris
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