Two former currency traders from Deutsche Bank and HSBC Holdings who were charged in Singapore earlier this month for allegedly cheating their employers by making false trades have admitted their wrongdoings, as per a Bloomberg report.
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Former Deutsche Bank trader Toh Hway Khuan and HSBC senior dealer Ivan Chng have pleaded guilty in separate hearings today. Both have admitted to using their banks’ accounts in 2009 to get preferential rates on the dollar. The cases are unrelated.
Unlawful Earnings
Chng was charged in 2015 with 149 counts of buying and selling around $800 million and unlawfully making about S$230,000 ($160,000). He pleaded guilty to 25 of the charges. Toh was also charged in 2015, with 39 counts of buying and selling more than $250 million and unlawfully making about S$140,000.
Prosecutors said that Chng’s trades deceived HSBC and were to the bank’s detriment.
In respect of Toh’s case, prosecutors sought a three-month jail term to deter those in the financial industry from making personal gains through deceitful means. Toh reportedly failed to disclose his beneficial ownership in the trades and his offences were difficult to detect. He will be sentenced at a later date.
Currency Rigging
The offences took place around the time the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) was reviewing attempts by banks to rig currency benchmarks between 2007 and 2011. The regulator censured multiple banks in 2013 ordering them to improve internal controls.
Probes into the rigging of foreign-Exchange markets and interest-rate benchmarks have led to global lenders paying billions of dollars in penalties, including a $100 million fine imposed on Barclays last August over Libor manipulation claims, as reported by Finance Magnates. This was on top of a $385 million fine imposed on the lender back in 2012 in a scandal that has cost Barclays $453 million.
