US: DOJ indicts FX trader for rigging

A federal grand jury returned an indictment against Akshay Aiyer, a former currency trader at a major US bank, for his alleged role in a conspiracy to manipulate prices in the foreign currency exchange market, the Justice Department (DOJ) announced on Thursday, May 10.

The one-count indictment, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges Akshay Aiyer with conspiring to fix prices and rig bids and offers in Central and Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and African (CEEMEA) currencies, which were generally traded against the US dollar and the euro.

According to the indictment, from at least as early as October 2010 through at least July 2013, Aiyer, along with other New York-based CEEMEA traders working for rival banks, participated in a conspiracy designed to suppress competition in order to increase each trader’s profits and decrease each trader’s losses.  Aiyer and his co-conspirators carried out this agreement by engaging in near-daily conversations through private electronic chat rooms, telephone calls, and text messages, in which they exchanged trading positions, confidential customer information, planned pricing for customer orders, and other categories of competitively sensitive information.  Aiyer and his co-conspirators then used this information to coordinate their live trading in CEEMEA currencies, including, at times, by certain traders refraining from trading against the others. Throughout the conspiracy, Aiyer and his co-conspirators took affirmative steps to conceal their anticompetitive behavior.

“As today’s indictment demonstrates, the Antitrust Division remains committed to holding individuals accountable for anticompetitive conduct that violates the integrity of global financial markets,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.

Full Content: Department of Justice

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