The Federal Reserve Board on Monday announced that it will seek a $1.2 million fine and a permanent ban on employment in the banking industry in an enforcement action against a foreign exchange (FX) trader who is alleged to have manipulated FX pricing benchmarks.
Christopher Ashton, a former FX trader at Barclays PLC, is alleged to have used electronic chat rooms to coordinate FX trading, facilitate manipulation of FX pricing benchmarks, disclose confidential customer information to traders at other organizations, and engage in other unsafe and unsound practices.
The enforcement proceedings against Ashton follow the Board's May 2015 enforcement actions against Barclays for unsafe and unsound practices related to their compliance and control failures concerning practices in the FX markets. The Board required Barclays to pay $342 million in penalties for control deficiencies related to FX trading.
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