U.S. trial begins for London forex traders accused of rigging prices...
Lawyers for Chris Ashton, Rohan Ramchandani and Richard Usher, who worked at Barclays Plc (BARC.L), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), respectively, countered that while the three had exchanged information, nothing they did was illegal.
In his opening statement on Wednesday, prosecutor Jeffrey Martino, of the U.S. Department of Justice, said they used a chatroom they dubbed “the cartel” to coordinate euro-U.S. dollar transactions in order to maximize their profits.
“They worked together to stack the deck,” he said, harming other participants in the market, including in the United States.
(Chris Ashton, Rohan Ramchandani and Richard Usher, who worked at Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co, respectively, were acquitted of all charges by a jury in Manhattan federal court after a trial of conspiring to violate the Sherman Act, a federal antitrust law.)