Other settlements are now likely, says Sanlam’s Patrice Rassou

Citigroup agreed to pay a penalty of almost 70 million rand ($5.4 million) to settle a South African antitrust investigation that said it participated in an alleged cartel to manipulate the value of the rand. Citigroup will make witnesses available to help prosecute other banks that participated in price fixing and market allocation in the trading of foreign-currency pairs involving the rand.

[See Financialish, 2/16/17:  Big Banks Engaged in Forex Manipulation - S. African Regulators]

The South African probe is the latest investigation into alleged rigging by the world’s biggest banks of the $5.1 trillion-a-day market for products tied to forex, which has resulted in more than $10 billion of penalties since Bloomberg first revealed manipulation in 2013.

Former Citigroup trader Christopher Cummins and ex-BNP Paribas employee Jason Katz have pleaded guilty to allegations in the U.S. for rigging emerging-market currencies. Both were identified in the Competition Commission investigation.

“There could well be other settlements now that it seems the parties are prepared to come forward,” Patrice Rassou, head of equities at Sanlam Investment Management in Cape Town, said in an e-mailed response to questions on Monday.

Barclays and its units that were named in the investigation may get the same sort of deal as Citigroup from South African antitrust authorities. It won’t be targeted for prosecution because the U.K. bank co-operated with regulators. Citigroup and Barclays were both named as part of the rand-rigging probe when it started in 2015.

NAMED FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS.    The commission said that BofA Merrill Lynch, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase, Nomura International, Commerzbank, Macquarie, Australia & NZ Banking Group, Investec, Standard Chartered and Standard Bank Group should be fined.