Former traders enter “not guilty” pleas in FX manipulation case at NY Southern District Court
All three defendants have waived their rights under the extradition treaty and agree to surrender on July 17, 2017 to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and to remain under the supervision of the Court for the Southern District of New York.
A brief follow-up to FinanceFeeds’ article from earlier today about three former FX traders due to appear at the New York Southern District Court today for a hearing and entering of pleas in an FX market manipulation case.
According to a report by the Financial Times, the lawyers for the three defendants – Richard Usher, Rohan Ramchandani, and Christopher Ashton, have entered “not guilty” pleas.
The court filings show that the defendants have all filed Affidavits of Waiver of Extradition. These documents, seen by FinanceFeeds, state that the defendants understand their rights under the extradition treaty in force between the United States and the United Kingdom and waive any and all such rights with respect to the charge set forth in the indictment filed in the Southern District of New York, entitled United States v. Usher et al. The defendants concede they are willing to voluntarily surrender to United States authorities to answer the charge set forth in that Indictment. Each of the three ex-traders waives his rights under the extradition treaty and agrees to surrender on July 17, 2017 to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and thereafter to remain under the supervision of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Judge Richard Berman today certified that the defendants appeared before him and that the statements made in the affidavits are true.
The indictment from January this year charges Richard Usher (former Head of G11 FX Trading-UK at an affiliate of The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, as well as former Managing Director at an affiliate of JPMorgan Chase & Co.), Rohan Ramchandani (former Managing Director and head of G10 FX spot trading at an affiliate of Citicorp) and Christopher Ashton (former Head of Spot FX at an affiliate of Barclays PLC) with conspiring to fix prices and rig bids for US Dollars and Euros in the FX spot market.
Known as “the Cartel” or “the Mafia,” the group of traders is alleged to have conspired through telephone calls and electronic messages, including conversations in a private electronic chat room. The anticompetitive behavior includes colluding around the time of certain benchmark rates known as fixes, such as coordinating their orders and trading to manipulate the price of the currency pair by the time of the fix.
