Ex-Rabobank trader guilty in Libor probe 

A former employee of Rabobank on Monday became the second of the Dutch bank’s ex-traders to plead guilty in a criminal plot to manipulate a global financial benchmark used to set rates on trillions of dollars in loans.

United Kingdom citizen Paul Robson, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in Manhattan federal court, admitting he helped manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate for Japanese yen between May 2006 and January 2011 in a plot to boost trading profits for himself and others.

Widely known as Libor, the benchmark represents the rates that London-based global banks would expect to pay in exchange for loans from each other in a variety of world currencies for different lengths of time.

Robson admitted guilt two months after Takayuki Yagami, another former Rabobank trader targeted in the case, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud for his involvement.

Utrecht-based Rabobank itself was fined nearly $1.1 billion by authorities in the U.S. and Europe last year to resolve Libor-related violations.

Robson admitted he accommodated other traders by submitting artificially high or low Libor rates of Japanese yen. In one incident cited in court records, Rabobank submitted a one-month yen Libor rate of 0.90 on Sept. 21, 2007 at Yagami’s request. That rate was seven basis points higher than the previous day and five basis points above the level Robson said that “bookies’ predicted it, investigators alleged.

 

Source: Usatoday

---