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'Cartel' Of 4 Big Banks To Plead Guilty To Gaming The Exchange Rate

Four major banks — Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland — have agreed to plead guilty to currency manipulation and pay over $5 billion in fines. Officials say that traders from the banks, who allegedly called themselves "the cartel," used secret codes to manipulate the exchange rate between U.S. dollars and Euros. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has taken the unusual step of tossing out what's called a deferred prosecution agreement against a fifth bank.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jim Zarroli is an NPR correspondent based in New York. He covers economics and business news.
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