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BP investigated forex traders amid 'cartel’ fixing claims
British energy giant BP admits it 'conducted a review' of its mainly London-based trading operation
BP has investigated whether traders on its foreign exchange desk were involved in the manipulation of the $5.3 trillion a day currency market, it emerged on Tuesday night.
The British energy giant admitted it had "conducted a review" of its mainly London-based trading operation after regulators in the UK and US began their own probes late last year.
BP's appearance in the foreign exchange scandal, which has seen one London banker arrested and six banks fined a total of £2.7bn, came after reports that members of the company's treasury trading unit had been told of planned currency trades hours before they happened.
Bloomberg claimed it had seen copies of messages sent to BP staff by a group of senior foreign-exchange traders at JP Morgan, Barclays, UBS and Citigroup, who met in a chatroom named "The Cartel".
Bloomberg alleged that a BP trader had used a chatroom with a JP Morgan trader. However, there’s no evidence that any BP traders were members of The Cartel nor that anyone at BP acted on information allegedly passed to them.
In a statement, BP said: “Following regulatory market (not into BP) investigations regarding the forex markets, we conducted a review into our activities in this area. BP’s forex desk has relationships (as a customer) with 26 relationship banks, including JP Morgan, Citibank and Barclays.
“BP has a robust framework of compliance requirements and internal controls which are constantly reviewed, and maintains an open dialogue with the appropriate regulators.”
A source told The Telegraph that BP did not find any wrongdoing and closed its investigation.
BP declined to comment on individual staff members, but said that its “code of conduct includes mandatory requirements for employees to disclose potential conflicts of interests internally”.
Dozens of bankers have been suspended or fired in relation to forex manipulation, and Chancellor George Osborne wrote to the Serious Fraud Office saying it would be given a blank cheque to investigate wrongdoing.
JP Morgan declined to comment.