US Department of Justice wants guilty plea from Citigroup for FX manipulation

Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) is under pressure from the United States Department of Justice to plead guilty to criminal charges that it manipulated FX benchmarks according to a report by Bloomberg yesterday.

Whilst the national regulatory authorities of Switzerland, Britain and the United States closed their year-long probe into FX manipulation in November last year, landing six banks with a collective $4.3 billion fine, the criminal investigations and class action law suits ensued.

In this particular case, officials within the US government have accused FX dealers of sharing confidential information about client orders and coordinating trades to boost their own profits.

The report by Bloomberg states that Citigroup has countered this with an offer that the plea come from a subsidiary that is smaller than the Citibank NA division.

Currently, the Department of Justice is considering these options and has not yet made its decision on which subsidiary of Citigroup to censure, however Bloomberg considers that the decision may be made before this summer and the fine will likely be up to $1 billion.

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