New York: Citigroup Inc. disclosed a new government probe involving the industry’s trading and clearing of interest-rate swaps months after the firm paid $425 million to resolve claims that it attempted to rig derivatives markets.
The New York-based bank is cooperating with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Citigroup said on Monday in a regulatory filing.
The company agreed earlier this year to pay $425 million to resolve a CFTC claim that it tried to rig interest-rate benchmarks from 2007 to 2012. Citigroup neither admitted to nor denied those allegations.
The disclosure is the latest probe into allegations that Wall Street’s biggest dealers colluded to influence benchmarks that determine prices for a range of financial instruments. Authorities around the world have been clamping down on the derivatives and currency markets since 2013 after allegations that bank traders colluded to rig benchmarks and other prices.
Other investigations into gold markets and currency options are also under way. In the currency market, more than a half-dozen lenders have been fined a total of more than $10 billion and scores of traders have been dismissed.
Mark Costiglio, a spokesman for Citigroup, decline to comment beyond the filing. Steven Adamske, a CFTC spokesman, declined to comment. Bloomberg
