Barclays trader says currency market rigging was all just a mix-up over Cockney rhyming slang
Barclays was fined £1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) by Britain's Financial Conduct Authority and the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) in May this year because it had a whole group of traders manipulating the currency markets.
The FCA, as well as the DFS, fined the bank based on evidence it gathered through chatroom transcripts between traders. The scandal led to a collective£3.7 billion ($5.6 billion ) in fines for Barclays, UBS, Citi, the Royal Bank of Scotland, JPMorgan, and Bank of America.
The transcripts included conversations from groups of traders who named themselves "The Cartel" and "The Mafia".
However, one of the former Barclays traders that was named in the transcripts is fighting back in court and is claiming that the FCA's investigation was based on "incomplete inquiries and misinterpreted evidence."
The misinterpreted evidence, ex-Barclays and UBS trader Chris Ashton says, is down to the regulator's inability to decipher Cockney rhyming slang.
Cockney rhyming slang is a dialect from the East End of London where speakers substitute words that rhyme with the word they intend to use. For example, someone using cockney rhyming slang would say "apples and pears" for "stairs" or "dog and bone" for "phone."
Ashton's lawyer, who spoke on the ex-trader's behalf in a London court on Wednesday said Ashton had not even been questioned over the evidence relied on by the FCA. "For there to be public confidence, it is important that regulatory action is based on a sound evidential basis; here we have significant doubts that there was any proper investigation," said Sara George in the Upper Tribunal court, as reported by the Financial Times.
"It's quite possible that the settlements - which have had such a disastrous effect on the reputation of the City of London - may simply have been based on a set of facts that simply did not exist."