HSBC executive arrested over ‘£2.7 billion exchange rate rigging scam’

A British banker has been charged in the US over an alleged £2.7million foreign exchange rigging scheme after FBI agents swooped in to arrest him at New York’s JFK airport according to the news published in Mail Online.

Mark Johnson, 50, HSBC’s head of global foreign exchange cash trading, is being held overnight in a Brooklyn jail ahead of his first appearance in court reported Sam Tonkin.

The US Justice Department is charging him and Stuart Scott, HSBC’s former head of European currency trading, after a long-running investigation into a £2.7billion ($3.5bn) transaction.

Prosecutors said the executives, who are both British citizens, misused information provided to them by a client that had hired HSBC to convert $3.5billion to British pounds in connection with a planned sale of one of the unnamed company’s subsidiaries.

Johnson and Scott, 43, used their insider knowledge to buy sterling in order to front-run the transaction, resulting in a spike in the price of the currency that was detrimental to HSBC’s client, prosecutors said.

When the full order was authorised, Mr Johnson was recorded on a telephone call as saying to Mr Scott ‘Ohhhh, f***king Christmas,’ the documents allege.

And he allegedly wrote a message to his co-accused Scott, which read: ‘Seems they’re starting to bite.’ The pair are said to have messaged each other to discuss how they could ‘ramp up’ the price of sterling.

‘The defendants allegedly betrayed their client’s confidence, and corruptly manipulated the foreign exchange market to benefit themselves and their bank,’ Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said in a statement.

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Feature image courtesy eia-international.org