The Wall Street Journal’s Anna Prior is reporting that another former yen trader for Dutch bank Rabobank Group NV has pleaded guilty to charges that he participated in a scheme to manipulate the benchmark London interbank offered rate, or Libor. The trader, U.K. citizen Paul Robson, pleaded guilty Monday in a New York federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud for manipulating yen Libor, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Mr. Robson was the second former Rabobank employee to plead guilty. In June, Takayuki Yagami plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud. The case against Mr. Robson comes as U.S. authorities continue to investigate alleged manipulation of benchmark rates. Rabobank agreed in October to pay $1.07 billion to international regulators to settle a Libor probe.
The yen Libor is intended to measure what banks charge each other to borrow funds in Japanese yen. Hundreds of trillions of dollars’ worth of securities and loans are linked in general to Libor, which makes it the top global benchmark used in financial products and transactions. Mr. Robson, along with former Rabobank yen Libor derivatives traders Paul Thompson and Tetsuya Motomura, was charged with conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud as well as substantive counts of wire fraud, according to the DOJ.
The indictment also alleged that the conspiracy involved numerous additional, unnamed individuals and entities. The Journal stated that Mr. Robson’s attorney and a representative for Rabobank didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Source: Wall Street Journal