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Explosive Allegation: Citigroup Leaked Central Bank Trading Activity
For years we had been wondering when it would start: by "it" we mean angry ex-bankers, disgruntled due to either the terms of their termination, their compensation, or generally unhappy with their treatment by their former employee, standing up and blowing the whistle on crimes they witnessed while (un)happily employed.
Then, over the past month, the answer has emerged as not one, not two, but at least six individual case have emerged in which former currency traders at Citigroup, HSBC, Lloyds and other banks have seen former employees sue their previous bosses. As Bloomberg reports, "some of the traders say they were unfairly swept up in clear-outs of currency desks at the center of regulatory probes into the manipulation of foreign-exchange markets."
And now they want revenge.
The reason for the wrath is that as a result of the crackdown on FX manipulation more than 30 traders were fired, suspended or put on leave over the last two years. However, as the Tom Hayes of Libor manipulation "rain man" fame has shown, in many cases those fired were merely the lowest men on the totem pole, and their termination was meant to cover up the crimes of individuals much higher up in the food, and value, chain. Indeed, Bloomberg adds, in the years after the 2008 financial crisis, fired bankers were telling London employment judges they had been made scapegoats for systemic failings.
Since most employment claims in the U.K. must be filed within three months of a dismissal to be allowed to proceed, they tend to come in clusters: and once one former worker shows there is little to lose, others quickly join in.
More importantly, since damages in employment cases are normally capped at about 78,300 pounds ($121,000), unless there is a finding of discrimination or the claimant wins status as a whistle-blower, employees are suddenly incentivized to expose all the crime they have been directly or indirectly witnessed to make sure their last potential parting gift from the financial industry is large enough.
And since few have the desire or eligibility to work in finance, they may as well go out with a bang: currency traders have little to lose by filing employment claims, according to James Davies, a London-based employment lawyer at Lewis Silkin. “If your reputation is already tarnished in the financial services sector then you’re less likely to be concerned by any adverse publicity arising from making a claim,” he said. “You’re also more likely to have the resources to make it possible to litigate.”
Here are some examples of the already filed cases, chronicled by Bloomberg:
Carly McWilliams, Perry Stimpson, David Madaras and Robert Hoodless all filed suits against Citigroup after they were fired amid the bank’s internal rigging investigation. Serge Sarramegna and Paul Carlier are suing HSBC and Lloyds for unfair dismissal and so-called public interest disclosure, or whistle-blowing, in relation to foreign-exchange practices. Only Stimpson’s case has reached trial so far. Carlier’s case could start as soon as Wednesday, the same day as a trial involving another Lloyds employee, Andrew Reed, is scheduled to begin. Including two discrimination complaints, as many as four banker lawsuits could be heard in London employment tribunals tomorrow.
Of all those, the case of Stimpson is by far the most interesting one.
Perry Stimpson Photographer: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg
Testifying at a London tribunal last week, Stimpson alleged improper conduct was endemic in the bank’s currency-trading and claimed he saw managers deliberately flout the bank’s code of conduct. The former FX trader spored nobody, and named former managers and specific examples of their misbehavior. Rules of client confidentiality could “be bent at the request of senior management,” he said.
"I’m not here to mudsling, I’m here so the truth about foreign exchange at Citigroup is heard once and for all," Stimpson said at the start of the case. The bank and the managers say his allegations are unfounded.
Maybe they are, but a deeper dive into his allegations reveals something far more troubling: Citigroup may have been sending details of its central bank customers' trading activity to other clients, Stimpson said in a witness statement to a London court on Thursday.
Here is the kicker according to Reuters:
"Our Investor Desk would comply with a weekly request from (a client) for details of Central Bank activity that Citi had transacted," Stimpson said in his witness statement to an employment tribunal in London. Stimpson did not specify which central banks he was referring to.
If anyone is confused, this means that not only do central banks trade FX on a day to day basis, something which has become increasingly clear in the past couple of years by merely observing the rigged market, but Citi was actively leaking this data to select clients!
Stimpson adds that Jeff Feig, who was Citi's global head of trading at the time, called a halt to sending round the "central bank survey", as Stimpson said it was referred to, in mid-2013 because he decided it was wrong. He did not elaborate.
Jeff Feig quit Citi in a hurry when the FX manipulation scandal was just getting started last September to join Fortress Macro as co-investment chief. He "unexpectedly" quit Fortress in this July, less than a year on the job, for "reasons unknown." Surprisingly, it may not just be the FX manipulation catching up with him: his biggest position had been a EURCHF bet which blew up in January after the shocking SNB peg-breaker announcement. Guess he didn't see that one coming.
Other unprecedented and criminal violations was Citigroup's "common practice on the Investor Desk to cut and paste details of Citibank's order book on to Bloomberg chats at the request of customers." Stimpson said in his statement.
While unproven yet, these allegations are nothing short of a bombshell, and explain why Citigroup and its peers have rushed in an epic scramble to settle all FX manipulation allegations as fast as possible, to avoid precisely details such as these from coming out.
They did not , however, anticipate scapegoats such as Perry daring to fight back.
Of course, Citi has neither seen, nor heard, nor said nothing: a Citi spokesman said: "All of the allegations of wrongdoing being made by Mr Stimpson have been investigated and were found to be without merit."
You mean to say the bank investigated itself and found that it did not engage in grossly criminal behavior such as leaking central bank trades to private clients? Unpossible!
On the other hand, Citi has its scapegoating narrative well laid out: it said Stimpson was dismissed for serious breaches of contract, alleging he shared confidential client information with traders at other banks via electronic chatrooms. Stimpson was dismissed last November in the wake of an industry scandal that resulted in banks paying more than $10 billion in fines for failing to stop traders attempting to manipulate the $5 trillion-a-day forex market.
Because where there is gross currency manipulation, it is always just one or two traders who did it. Nobody else! They never got the idea by watching their bosses and superiors do just that, and greenlight their own manipulation. Duh.
Ironically, Citi's story falls apart when one digs through the evidence: Stimpson said he was strongly encouraged to gather and share more market information with colleagues and traders at other banks in order to have a broader understanding of market conditions to help the bank in its trading. Maintaining contacts to gather information became one of his annual goals that would help dictate his year-end bonuses.
"Dude, get yourself on a chat," his then line manager Bob de Groot told him in 2009, according to Stimpson's statement. "Perry has made a good effort to talk to other participants in the market, he could give a little more effort in sharing information and ideas across the business," is what de Groot wrote in his 2009 year-end review, Stimpson claimed in his statement.
It gets worse:
In his testimony, Stimpson said Citigroup staff breached confidentiality around some clients and that some senior staff used inside information to trade, in contravention of the bank's own code of conduct.
In his witness statement, Stimpson said Michael Plavnik, then head of the short-term interest rate trading desk, looked to profit from trading euros around that day's "fixing", the daily process of setting what are effectively benchmark exchange rates used by many funds, companies and central banks around the world.
Plavnik had heard Citi's spot FX desk had a large order to buy euros at the fix. Armed with that knowledge, he bought 200 million euros before the fix to sell them back into the market at the fixing rate, Stimpson claimed in his statement.
And, lo and behold, a Citi spokesman told Reuters that "Plavnik has not been found to have committed any misconduct." That is to say, who knows how many more senior bankers Plavnik could take down with him if charges were filed against even a mid-level maret rigger.
Instead he was rewarded, more for not getting caught than any other reason: Plavnik has since been promoted to global head of short-term interest rate trading.
That said, Stimpson is not innocent either: "Stimpson, who is representing himself, admitted that he had signed Citi codes of conduct, which covered a wide range of issues from ethics to client confidentiality, but barely paid any attention to their content."
Neither did anybody else, and until all these market manipulators finally end up in jail, nobody ever will.
In the meantime, however, expect many more such scapegoats to emerge and explain to the world how all such former "conspiracy theories" were really "conspiracy fact" - who knows, maybe one day a former Fed trader will give the full explanation of just how the NY Fed's market group manipulates the S&P500 on a day to day basis with the generous help of Citadel's E-mini spoofing algorithms...
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Please, what would be "explosive" or "surprising" is if someone actually went to prison.
What's new with this news? nothing I guess. I agree with you LoP. If some of these criminals went to jail, then that woould be Exlposive.
If this gets attention in the mainstream press then the allegations are likely false. If it goes largely unoticed on the other hand...
What, and stop the fraud, the foundation of The System!?
Could it be any clearer that it is time, literally, to throw these pukes to the lions? Impossible to not get the message.
These motherfuckers know they've got everyone by the bollocks and can squeeze as hard as they want. Want your money? Oh sorry we have a technical glitch and our systems are down see ya.
#banklivesmatter
even better actual explosives!
What will be "explosive" is the FOMC's sharts when they can't fight off the impending implosion anymore.
Well, when $100 BILLION is allocated to ..
We will see people going to jail .. (and some hanging by a rope.)
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/01/11/another-thwarted-attempt-to-hija...
And we are going to see this very, very soon ..
Injustice does not exist in a vacuum .. (even though that vacuum could well have a duration of some 100 years.)
One minus 1 there. HFT on his lunchbreak?
Shocked.....
Just a matter of time before the insider patsies made the turn < skin saving , bitchez >
All Whistleblowers should become Billionaires $$$$ no matter the subject
we need blood coming out of every orfice imaginable !
WHERE. IS. THE. FUCKING. ROPE.
Huge finger wagging coming to Shitibank. Who knows, maybe even a $100 fine or something really severe. Some poor janitor could be fired for sure over this. Oh the humanity!
The D.O.J. and the S.E.C. are on it I'm sure! Just as soon as they find Jon Corzine!
Unproven allegations of a disgruntled former employee, oh and free Jon Corzine.
And the Banksters stand up en masse and rise as one chanting, "no jail time, no jail time..."
William Dudley and his hotline to Goldman.
Impoverish the many so a select fewcan profit huge.
You mean to tell me bankers are crooks. Say it ain't so.
Employed dirtbag FX Trader: "This is AWESOME!"
Unemployed dirtbag FX Trader: "What!?!? How DARE you fuckers pull me off the teat of corruption! I'll show YOU!"
Hey, if you hire morally bankrupt people to do morally bankrupt things, you shouldn't be surprised by ANYTHING they do - like turning around and tattling on your corrupt business practices.
I got $20 that says nobody goes to jail ;)
Love it.
Likely outcome: Citibank pays a nasty fine. Stimpson, who is given a short sentence for currency manipulation is killed during his second week of his 18 month sentence. Other whistleblowers evaporate into nothingness.
by nasty you mean 1% of profits(record bonuses will be paid as well and another year of free interest from the FED?
A quibble: he won't be killed. He'll suffer a convenient accident within hours of detailing the evidence that he has, the evidence that will strangely amount to auto erotic asphyxiation and Thai ladyboy porn and an expensive women's shoe collection.
"Of course he was making it up, did you see all that weird shit they pulled out of his house?"
And, a banker will collect on his insurance policy.
Bernie Sanders: "The business model of Wall Street is fraud.
Stuart Varney (Fox Business)..."The Dow Jones average was at 6,500 in March 2009, it moved up to 18,000, anybody who was in the stock market over that period of time made money, where's the fraud?
So I guess it's not fraud if you've made money. Never mind the price fixing scandals and record fines.
https://youtu.be/3p4hTDS0MTI
So... Pyramid scams are not fraud until they collapse?
Schrodinger's pyramid.
Didn't we already know that this is going on in ALL markets? It will crash into a pile of shit.
-Some detective show
Was a movie 'Law Abiding Citizen'
At some point self preservation will trump the contract...
Trump?
E-mailgate no longer matters. Look, squirrel!
Wake me when this fraud-saturated economy sends even one banker to jail.
New DOJ = Old DOJ
Both incompetent. At least Loretta hasn't been handing guns to drug lords ... yet.
But can the Citi coffee fund afford to cover the fine?
Will they be all out of Splenda next week?
Stay tuned..
Whatever you think of him, only Bernie Sanders has the BALLS to flat out say:
" Wall Street's Business Model Is Based On Fraud ".
Beware nail guns
I don't have a cent invested in stock or bonds anymore.
It's not because I'm scared.
It's because I think it's morally wrong to participate.
I need serious help, because I don't know why I am here.
In your case I fear it would be ineffective.
I'm waiting for the day when somebody finally tires of this crap and begins to take matters into their own hands. Disappear a couple dozen bankster criminals, and then they might at least think twice before screwing people. On second thought, it would probably only give the surviving sociopaths a bit of a chuckle figuring they were smarter than the others. SMH
Oh no.. a tiny fine might be levied that will be chalked up as a cost of doing business as the huge profits made it well worth it.
Not really news just confirmation. Is this the part where the whales start eating each other? If whenever criminal charges are filed big heads are gonna roll
You mean the real, wrath of God type of retribution like Corzine received right?
Put Fifa people in jail not Wall street leeches. Lynch better be careful she is not branded a full blown hypocrite and ends up "lynched" herself, figuratively speaking of course!
Notice, the evidence is coming to light in civil court, not because of an FBI investigation. It doesn't matter what comes out in a tort suit, there's not going to be a criminal prosecutor in this Justice Department, still, who would touch the banksters with a ten-foot pole.
They'd rather be fried alive than miss their chance at the revolving door.
What whisleblower has made a difference in the last 20 years? What has changed? These fuckers know they're untouchable! Nothing changes until this shitshow crashes and burns! When Assange & Snowden are welcome back to the USA as heroes will you know real change has taken place!
They're not even hiding the corruption anymore. And, the citizenry stands helpless vs the ruling financial elite.
They truly are ABOVE the law.
GASP! A MAJOR BANK LEAKED TRADING ACTIVITY?!?!
I am Jack's lack of surprise
What it is with these people is the same thing as what happened with the Mafia.
When the CIA moved in and got on with their superior drug running the Mafia started losing lots of money. Then it got to the point where if you killed someone, you didn't really get rewarded so people stopped doing it. It just denigrated from there.
Same thing is happening with these bankers. Other nations are making sure to bankrupt them and they're not covering the small stuff such as 'paying the little criminal'!
Hence, the defensive posture whenever someone utters the words 'AUDIT THE FED!'
Yeah, but this is London. There is no case to answer, sorry won't be a case to answer. And once x-factor season starts nobody there gives a shit. They oughta smuggle 100K Syrian refugees in. Seriously most Brits are dead from the neck up, they wouldn't notice them.
Feig....the bundler for Obama? Say it ain't so!
the fbi, sec, doj, et al are a huge joke. j edgar hoover in a dress is less laughable
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.
Are these really News for Traders from outside Citi, Deutsche Bank , JPM, etc (just listing the top rated ones) ?
Is there going to be a hanging.... I hope its a good one, they spool them by tying there legs together....
The OneBank meets the Man Who Sold the World.
I want it all and i want it now.
Will bad junior get another cookie or will papa put him over his knee.
Tune in for the next episode of The Fed McScummy Show.
I incline to the guillotine solution.