Ten former employees at Deutsche Bank and Barclays are to be charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in relation to allegations they plotted to fix benchmark euro interest rates.
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The SFO has now charged a total of 23 people in relation to rate rigging. According to the fraud office the investigation is ongoing and “criminal proceedings will be issued against other individuals in due course”.
The defendants will make their first appearance at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 11 January 2016 while the SFO’s investigation continues.
Alongside Bermingham, the other former Barclays employees to be charged are Carlo Palombo, Philippe Moryoussef and Sisse Bohart.
A global investigation into manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, started in 2008 after an article in The Wall Street Journal and other reports questioned the accuracy of the rate in the lead-up to the financial crisis. Each bank sends in an interest rate every day, which represents the cost of lending to another bank. The 38-year-old, from Denmark, was a junior submitter at Barclays.
In August, Tom Hayes became the first person to be convicted of rate rigging by a British jury and was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to 14 years in prison.
Deutsche Bank employees accused include high profile trader Christian Bittar, as well as Achim Kraemer, Andreas Hauschild, Joerg Vogt, Ardalan Gharagozlou and Kai-Uwe Kappauf.
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Barclays was fined £290m by United States and United Kingdom regulators three years ago for a “serious, widespread” role in trying to manipulate Libor rates. Neither the banker nor the bank can be named, for legal reasons. Banks and other financial institutions have paid about $9 billion in fines tied to Libor and other key rates.
