JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) along with Citigroup and other major banks are facing a whopping $3.5 billion lawsuit for allegedly manipulating the forex market.
The mass lawsuit was revived by a London Court on Tuesday over ‘alleged foreign exchange rigging’ reports Reuters.
The case was originally brought by Phillip Evans, a former inquiry chair at Britain’s Competition Markets Authority, on behalf of thousands of asset managers, pension funds and financial institutions.
Evans brought the case, which was also against UBS, Barclays, NatWest, and MUFG.
Evans’s lawyer, Anthony Maton from law firm Hausfeld, said in a statement: “A judgment of this nature was required for all those UK businesses – big and small – who have suffered loss as a result of the manipulation of the FX markets to achieve restitution.”
JP Morgan, Citi, UBS, Barclays, Natwest and MUFG all declined to comment according to the report.
Evans’ case is based on findings made by the European Commission, which fined banks more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in 2019 for rigging the multitrillion-dollar foreign exchange market between 2007 and 2013.
Some of the world’s biggest investment banks have paid more than a combined $11 billion in fines to settle U.S., British and European regulatory allegations that traders manipulated currency rates for years.
It is not a secret that JPMorgan is notoriously known for manipulating the markets.
In 2022, an ex-JPMorgan gold trader was found guilty of fraud in the commodities market between 2006 to 2009.
Christopher Jordan was convicted of wire fraud affecting a financial institution by a federal judge in Chicago, the latest win for U.S prosecutors in their crackdown on illegal “spoofing” trades and market manipulation.
JPMorgan Scandals and Fines Overview
A report earlier this month showed that JPMorgan was quickly approaching an overwhelming $39 billion in fines for numerous scandals and securities violations over the years.
“A recent $4 million fine issued by the SEC against the banking giant will bring the amount of money JPMorgan has paid for banking, securities and additional fines since 2000 to $38.995 billion,” says DH.
The data is pulled from the Violation Tracker, a comprehensive corporate misconduct database that is currently updated to just before the new SEC fine was announced.
JPMorgan has had 114 financial offenses, 63 consumer-protection-related offenses, as well as 77 investor protection violations being some of the most serious on record.
Offense type range between ‘toxic securities abuses’, ‘fraud’, ‘anti-money-laundering deficiencies’, and several other violations.
The bank was recently charged for deleting a whopping 47 million emails related to a DOJ and SEC investigation.
JPMorgan’s latest scandal is taking retail investors back to when TD Ameritrade’s Bartlett Warehouse mysteriously burned down after the SEC announced 60 hedge funds were to undergo investigations for manipulative short selling.
The emails dated from Jan. 1 to April 23, 2018, and were deleted in June 2019 from about 8,700 mailboxes, including those belonging to as many as 7,500 employees who regularly worked with customers.
Many of the emails were business records that the largest U.S. bank was required under SEC rules to keep for three years.
According to the SEC, JPMorgan has been unable in at least 12 civil securities-related regulatory probes to comply with subpoenas and document requests for communications that had been permanently deleted.
JPMorgan Pays $290 Million in Epstein Case
In June, JPMorgan agreed to pay a $290 Million settlement in the Jeffrey Epstein case.
“Any association with (Epstein) was a mistake and we regret it,” JPMorgan said in a statement.
“We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was using our bank in any way to help commit heinous crimes.”
The settlement followed months of embarrassing disclosures that JPMorgan ignored internal warnings and overlooked red flags about Epstein because he had been a valuable client.
Epstein was a JPMorgan client from 1998 to 2013 and was kept on even after being arrested in 2006 on prostitution-related charges and pleading guilty two years later.
The accord would resolve claims against the largest U.S. bank by potentially more than 100 victims.
Epstein killed himself at age 66 in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
“It could be that the bank doesn’t want this to stay in the press,” said Carliss Chatman, a professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia.
“At a time Americans are questioning the banking system, associating Chase with human trafficking is not good for business.”
Davia Temin, chief executive of crisis management firm Temin and Co, said settling rather than fighting to the end sends “the right message across Wall Street.”
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