BoE Enlists Queen’s Council For Forex Manipulation Investigation

The Bank of England has called in one of the most respected figures in the legal world, Lord Grabiner, to investigate allegations that its some of its staff may have been involved in manipulating the £3tn-a-day foreign exchange markets for almost 10 years.

Parachuted in by News Corp to chair its standards committee in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, the QC is thought to demand £3,000 an hour for his time although is likely to be working for the Bank for a lower rate.

Grabiner has been appointed by the Bank’s oversight committee, which was created in 2012 to police the central bank and is composed entirely of non-executive directors of the Bank. The committee last week began a formal investigation into whether any bank staff knew about attempts to rig the foreign exchange markets.

Allegations about potential fixing of foreign exchange markets began to emerge last year. The Bank then began an initial inquiry into whether its own staff were aware of or condoned the potential manipulation of a “fix” which takes place at 4pm daily.

The Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, told MPs this week that the scandal had the potential to be bigger than the one into rigging of Libor, which has resulted in big-name banks being fined billions of pounds on both sides of the Atlantic.

via The Guardian

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza