A district court judge in Connecticut accepted a plea agreement and sentenced RBS Securities Japan Limited, a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), for manipulating the Japanese Yen London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), a leading benchmark used in financial products and transactions around the world. Under the plea agreement, signed in April 2013, RBS Securities Japan agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and pay a $50 million fine. As part of its plea agreement, RBS Securities Japan admitted to manipulating LIBOR in directions favorable to their trading positions and defrauded RBS counterparties.

The parent company RBS entered into a deferred prosecution agreement imposing an addition $100 million penalty and requiring the parent company to admit and accept responsibility and cooperate with the Justice Department. Combined with the near $462 million regulatory penalties and disgorgement collected by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.K Financial Conduct Authority, the DOJ’s criminal penalties bring the total amount paid by RBS and its subsidiaries as a result of this conduct to approximately $612 million.

Read the entire press release, “RBS Securities Japan Ltd Sentenced for Manipulation of Yen Libor”
Read our earlier post related to the case, “Libor Settlement Is a Gift that Keeps Giving for U.S. Regulators”