Four major banks pleaded guilty on Wednesday trying to manipulate foreign exchange rates and six banks were fined a total of nearly $6 billion in a settlement that substantially ends a global probe into misconduct in the $5-trillion-a-day market.
Traders at Citigroup, JP Morgan, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, who described themselves as “The Cartel”, used an invitation-only electronic chatroom and coded language to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros between December 2007 and January 2013, according to U.S authorities.