The Bank of England has launched a “full legal review” into claims that its officials gave tacit approval to collusion among foreign-exchange traders, now part of a major international investigation.
Deputy governor Andrew Bailey told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee that the review was being carried out by in-house lawyers “supported by outside counsel”.
He said: “The governors have taken these claims extremely seriously. We have released a minute (of the meeting) but obviously there are now allegations of different versions.”
He said that the governors had “immediately” acted in the wake of the publication of the claims, holding that a senior trader’s note of the meeting differed sharply from the Bank’s own minute. This said blandly that “there was a brief discussion on extra levels of compliance that many bank trading desks were subject to when managing client risks”.
The alternative is believed to be in the hands of the Financial Conduct Authority. It has yet to be seen by the Bank and Mr Bailey appealed for the writer to allow him to view it.
Questions over the mounting foreign-exchange trading scandal that involves regulators in Switzerland and the US as well as Britain, were tabled by MPs before what was the final session of the committee’s inquiry into the near collapse of Co-operative Bank.
