Crooked bankers are STILL laughing at the law: Barclays and RBS are hit by new £2BILLION fine for rigging markets - but guilty men are protected by cloak of anonymity

• e-mail

Rogue traders at banks fined £2billion for market fixing should be named and jailed, MPs said last night.

Despite manipulating exchange rates to inflate their bonuses and defraud clients, the crooks have escaped criminal punishment and their identities are being kept secret.

Barclays staff were still cheating last September – clear proof that banks have failed to clean up their act after a series of scandals.

Scroll down for video 

Fined: Barclays alone has been ordered to pay out £1.53 billion for currency exchange rigging

Antony Jenkins (pictured), chief executive at Barclays, apologised for the bank's role in the scandal

Calling themselves the ‘cartel’ and the ‘three musketeers’, the rogue traders used internet chat rooms to plot their crooked deals.

One message from an employee at Barclays, which was fined £1.5billion, summed up their cavalier attitude: ‘If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.’ 

In a separate scam, staff ripped off clients by offering them poor prices on foreign currency and pocketing the difference.

John Mann, Labour MP and former member of the Treasury committee, said: ‘Name them, shame them and where possible jail them.’

Ukip’s Douglas Carswell said: ‘If a criminal offence is committed by a constituent of mine I’d expect them to be named. The same should apply to the banksters who criminally rigged markets. This corporatist racketeering gives capitalism a bad name. If we want to safeguard the free market and the system which has made us prosperous we need to treat people guilty of criminal wrongdoing as criminals and throw them in jail.’

But the regulators provoked outrage by refusing to disclose the offenders’ names. Insiders said doing so might prejudice criminal investigations. In yet another day of shame for the banks:

• Four pleaded guilty to criminal charges – Barclays, RBS, Citigroup and UBS;

• JPMorgan and Bank of America also shared in a £3.7billion record fine;

• The currency manipulation continued long after Barclays became the first bank to be fined for rigging Libor interest rates in June 2012;

• The bank has fired four employees, three of them based in London. It has been told to fire four more in New York;

• RBS, part-owned by the taxpayer, was fined £430million.

Benjamin Lawsky, head of New York’s department of financial services, where most of the fines were levied, said: ‘Put simply, Barclays employees helped rig the foreign exchange market.

‘They engaged in a brazen “Heads I win, tails you lose” scheme to rip off their clients.’

Ross McEwan, chief executive at RBS, said 'pleading guilty for such wrongdoing is another stark reminder of how badly this bank lost its way'

Incredibly Barclays shares rose because the fine was lower than expected.

The Serious Fraud Office has charged 13 individuals for rigging Libor interest rates and one has pleaded guilty. But it has charged no one yet over the foreign exchange fixing.

The revelations will be particularly damaging to Barclays and its chief executive Antony Jenkins, who promised to clean up the bank he joined in August 2012.

At 4pm, when key rates are set, rogue traders used internet chatrooms to share confidential information about orders from clients for currency. By clubbing together they were able to move rates up and down to boost profits for their bank – and increase their bonuses.

Five banks, including RBS, were fined a total of £2.6billion for the scam in November last year by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

HOW THE MULTI-BILLION POUND FOREIGN EXCHANGE  SCANDAL UNFOLDED

April 2013

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) first sent out letters to firms over forex trading market activities.

October 2013

The FCA confirmed it was carrying out its own formal investigation into a number of firms and their foreign exchange trading activities, joining other regulators around the world in scrutinising firms over potential manipulation.

Switzerland's financial markets watchdog FINMA revealed in early October that it was investigating several of the country's banks over possible currency market manipulation. Hong Kong and the United States had also launched their own probes.

January 2014

FCA chief executive Martin Wheatley told the Treasury Select Committee that allegations surrounding foreign exchange trading were 'every bit as bad' as the Libor rate-rigging scandal.

In January last year, FCA chief executive Martin Wheatley (pictured) said that allegations surrounding foreign exchange trading were 'every bit as bad' as the Libor rate-rigging scandal

February 2014

The Bank of England told the Treasury Select Committee it was co-operating with an investigation by the FCA in the wake of allegations over a meeting between officials on a bank sub-committee and traders in 2012.

A Bloombery report claimed traders had admitted they shared information about customer orders before currency benchmarks were set - a practice at the heart of the probe into market manipulation.

March 2014

The Bank of England suspended an employee over compliance concerns following claims its officials had been told about foreign exchange rate-fixing and had condoned market manipulation.

It said an internal probe had found no evidence that Bank of England staff had been involved in the manipulation of foreign exchange - or forex - rates. But it revealed it had suspended a member of staff while it investigated compliance with internal control processes.

June 2014

Chancellor George Osborne used his annual Mansion House speech to set out plans to clean up London's vast foreign exchange (forex) market, with new criminal sanctions for traders who engaged in abuse and malpractice.

He said new criminal penalties introduced in the wake of the Libor rate-rigging scandal would be extended to cover the forex market as well as the fixed income and commodity markets.

He also launched a 12-month joint review by the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) into the way key wholesale financial markets operate.

In June last year, Chancellor George Osborne (pictured) used his annual Mansion House speech to set out plans to clean up London's vast foreign exchange (forex) market

July 2014

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) launched a criminal inquiry into the alleged rigging of foreign exchange (forex) markets.

November 2014

Five banks including RBS and HSBC were fined 2.6 billion US dollars (£1.7 billion) by US and UK regulators of the foreign exchange market. Traders under swashbuckling nicknames such as the '3 musketeers' were found to have clubbed together to rig forex.

The penalties included a record 1.1 billion US dollars (£703 million) by the FCA. Other banks to take the financial hit were Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and UBS.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found some of the misconduct occurred in the same period the banks were on notice of regulatory probes into the Libor manipulation scandal.

December 2014

Chancellor George Osborne announced new rules to ensure traders caught rigging foreign exchange (forex) markets would face up to seven years behind bars. This extended legislation put in place in 2013 to cover the manipulation of the interbank lending rate, Libor.

April 2015

Barclays put by another £800 million to cover forex provisions at its first quarter results, taking the total set aside to £2 billion. RBS also bumped up its provisions for the scandal with an additional £334 million in its first quarter report. It has already paid £399 million in penalties to UK and US regulators.

May 2015

Barclays has agreed a £1.53 billion fine with US and UK authorities amid a raft of new settlements with banks over their involvement in the scandal.

The British banking giant's penalty included a record £284.4 million to the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and the group pleaded guilty to a violation of US anti-trust law.

Royal Bank of Scotland was among four other banks also hit with penalties, agreeing to pay a further 669 million US dollars (£430 million) to US authorities, which comes on top of a £399 million penalty last November.

US banks JP Morgan Chase & Co and Citigroup as well as Swiss bank UBS were fined a total of 5.6 billion US dollars (£3.7 billion) for their role.

Barclays pulled out of the last settlement to minimise the drip-feed of bad publicity in the face of fines from other regulators.

The decision appears to have backfired after it was hit with a penalty of more than £1.5billion yesterday, including a record fine of more than £284million from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

Regulators in the United States and Europe have now fined seven banks around £6.5billion – more than the £5.8billion dished out for rigging Libor interest rates.

David Buik, from stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said: ‘I’ve been a big supporter of investment banking for many years but this is beyond the pale. These criminals must be named and shamed.’

Tim Bush, of shareholder lobby group Pirc, said: ‘It is unacceptable not only for the fines to fall to shareholders but for the identity of those involved to remain a secret.’

The New York Department of Financial Services said that from at least 2008 to 2014, Barclays salesmen conspired with traders to offer clients a poor rate on currency.

RBS chairman Philip Hampton said he accepted that the bank had failed and he apologised.

ALEX BRUMMER: Why aren't Barclays gangsters in prison?  

The Quaker founders of Barclays would be spinning in their graves if they knew that what was once the most trusted name in global banking was being dragged down by behaviour befitting of gangsters.

The bank has agreed to pay a record breaking fine of £1.53billion to authorities on both sides of the Atlantic after finally admitting to criminal behaviour in the foreign currency markets where exchange rates, which impact on travellers and businesses around the world, are set each day.

Fines: Five global banks have received fines, including Barclays, UBS, Citigroup, JP Morgan and RBS

What is as disturbing is that the conspiracy to cheat Barclays customers and to rig the currency markets continued well beyond 2012 when it reached a non-prosecution deal with the fearsome US Department of Justice over its manipulation of Libor interest rates which set the cost of borrowing around the world.

It was disclosure of collusion and cheating in the interest rate markets that led to the sacking of Britain’s highest paid banker, Bob Diamond, in 2012.

The revelations of more wrongdoing must raise serious questions about the future of Mr Diamond’s successor, Oxford-educated Antony Jenkins.

Even though the £285million fine imposed on Barclays by the City watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, is the biggest it has ever levied against any institution it is still dwarfed by the £1.25billion imposed by a platoon of American enforcers.

The Justice Department came down particularly heavily, imposing criminal penalties, because of the bank’s earlier promise to clean up its act.

In spite of the scale of the fines and the serious nature of the wrongdoing Barclays is still not issuing an unqualified apology to its investors and customers.

A weasel-worded statement from Mr Jenkins noted ‘we deeply regret that it occurred’ – as if this was a minor deviation from the bank’s normal behaviour.

It claimed that what had happened was ‘incompatible’ with the purpose and values of Barclays. The bitter truth is that no British bank has been more caught up in misconduct discovered since the financial crisis of 2007-08 than Barclays.

In addition to its transgressions in London-based interest rate and foreign exchange markets it has paid fines for failing to keep money it looks after for clients separate from the bank’s own funds; for rigging the gold price fix and manipulating US energy markets.

The bank and several of its key current and former executives are already under investigation by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office over alleged wrongful commission payments made to Middle East investors in 2008 as it sought to escape the clutches of the UK government.

It is also being investigated in the United States for allegedly misleading customers, including major pension funds and insurers, who bought stocks and shares through so-called ‘dark pools’ where the buyers and sellers are unknown to each other.

It is only at the behest of the Americans that the eight main culprits in the foreign exchange scandal, three of whom are working in London, have been or are being dismissed.

It is astonishing Barclays allowed them to remain in their jobs for so long. It shows an insouciance at the highest level that is totally at variance with the claims that the toxic corporate culture has been changed. The bank argues that the traders concerned were relatively low level and the top brass could not have been expected to know what they were up to.

Barclays has already sacked four employees this month while RBS has dismissed three members of staff and suspended two others

The bank contrasts this with the Libor scandal where it has been largely conceded that the order to try to fix the market came directly from the top.

Yet Barclays has made much of the fact that all of its 140,000 staff were required to sign up to a new code of conduct in the wake of the Libor scandal in 2012, or given the alternative of leaving the organisation. Mr Jenkins told his staff bonuses would not just be assessed on financial success but would have to reflect the new clean set of values at the core of the bank.

Clearly, a bank which harboured groups of traders known among their peers as ‘cartel’ or ‘mafia’ and engaged in cheating on the busiest markets in the world felt they could ignore the instructions to clean up from the top.

What is particularly outrageous is that the names of the individuals involved are being shielded from the public and granted special privileges of privacy when there can be no public interest in shielding their identities.

The fine levied on Barclays and the £430million penalty imposed on state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland for similar offences are a devastating blow to the reputation of the City of London, where 40 per cent of the £3.5trillion of foreign exchange deals take place each day.

Fearful that the stain on the reputation of the City will be hard to shift, the Treasury noted that it had acted to deal with the abuses and unacceptable behaviour.

The public has the right to ask, however, why the American authorities are so much more ruthless in pursuing misconduct and so much more ambitious in their financial penalties.

They might also ask why none of the individuals at the heart of the foreign exchange and interest rate rigging scandals in Britain have yet to find themselves in prison for offences which earned them fat bonus cheques and their banks excessive earnings at the expense of customers.