RBS to pay $615 million to US and British authorities
06 Feb 2013
UK's Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) would pay US and British authorities $615 million pleading guilty to wire fraud in Japan, as it sought to settle allegations of manipulating global benchmark interest rates.
Chairman Philip Hampton said today that the RBS board acknowledged that there were serious shortcomings in its systems and controls as also in the integrity of a small group of its employees.
He said it was a sad day for RBS, but also an important one in continuing to set right the mistakes of the past.
Over a dozen traders at RBS offices in London, Singapore and Tokyo manipulated the London interbank offered rate (Libor), which was used in pricing trillions of dollars worth of loans, from at least 2006 until 2010.
The rigging continued even after traders came to know that Libor submissions were under investigation.
In a bid to avert a political ruckus, the part state-owned bank would dip into bonuses it pays to its staff to pay the fines.
The bank has been hit with the second-largest fine so far in an international investigation in which Switzerland's UBS and Britain's Barclays have already been implicated.
