US: Former HSBC FX chief’s fraud conviction upheld in court

Mark Johnson, HSBC’s former chief currency dealer arrested at New York’s John F Kennedy airport, has lost his appeal against his 2017 conviction in the US for wire fraud over a foreign-exchange deal with Cairn Energy, reported the Financial Times.

Johnson was convicted by a New York court for defrauding Scottish energy company Cairn over a US$3.5 billion transaction executed in 2011 in which HSBC was hired to convert the proceeds of an asset sale from dollars to sterling. 

According to the Financial Times, his was the first jury trial in the world to stem from the forex-rigging scandal, for which banks paid around US$10 billion in fines. The court handed Johnson a US$300,000 fine and a two-year sentence in federal prison. 

After three months, he was allowed to return to the UK on bail to await his appeal. But on Thursday, September 12, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that there was sufficient evidence for a jury to conclude that Johnson had deprived Cairn of the ability to make proper economic decisions and that he had made material misrepresentations to it.

“We conclude that Johnson’s misrepresentations provided sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find beyond reasonable doubt that he intended to defraud Cairn,” the appeal judgment reads.

Full Content: Financial Times

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