Speaker 1: Well, now it's time for our daily Bloomberg labbrrief exploring
Speaker 1: legal issues in the news, and today Bloomberg LAJO student
Speaker 1: Grosso and Michael Best discuss charges against currency traders at
Speaker 1: several major international banks who are accused of market rigging.
Speaker 1: To speak with John Coffee, a professor at Columbia University
Speaker 1: Law School, and Peter Henning, a professor ed Wayne State University.
Speaker 1: Peter start us off by explaining what these traders allegedly
Speaker 1: did in the chat rooms. Well, it's fairly simple in
Speaker 1: that they have this spot where each could tell the others, uh,
Speaker 1: at least according to the government, where they wanted the
Speaker 1: price of the dollar in the euro set. So how
Speaker 1: that number is figured out each day and then used
Speaker 1: for various transaction is there is a fix. There is
Speaker 1: a particular point in time when you get a quick
Speaker 1: snapshot of the market and that says this is the
Speaker 1: value of the euro versus the dollar and with other currencies.
Speaker 1: And so they were trading messages back and forth to
Speaker 1: if you will fix the fix and try to have
Speaker 1: it help out their positions because they're at competing banks.
Speaker 1: So theoretically the price really should be set by the
Speaker 1: market this is conspiracy to violate the antitrust laws because
Speaker 1: they're trying to fix the price. Well, John, one of
Speaker 1: the things that's interesting about this case is that while
Speaker 1: they're being charged under US law, British authorities had cleared
Speaker 1: them for this. So how is that possible? Well, of
Speaker 1: course you can offend the laws of two different countries.
Speaker 1: If you shoot a bullet across the state line from
Speaker 1: one state into the next day, those states have jurisdiction
Speaker 1: for what happens because you did something, either the intent
Speaker 1: or the effect was in each jurisdiction. Uh. Now, it
Speaker 1: is true that the US historically has enforced its law
Speaker 1: more aggressively then has Great Britain, and it may be
Speaker 1: that the US has were able to accumulate better evidence.
Speaker 1: I also would point out that this is the last
Speaker 1: days of the Obama administration, and I think they're trying
Speaker 1: to get all the cases though in their pipeline into
Speaker 1: formal arged proceedings, both partly to get credit and partly
Speaker 1: to uh embarrass the future administration if it dropped these cases.
Speaker 1: But I think this was the last chance they had,
Speaker 1: and they took that chance. Because you noticed they haven't
Speaker 1: indicated that any of these people are in custody. More normally,
Speaker 1: you would not indict people until you had arrested them,
Speaker 1: so there was no chance that they would go into hiding.
Speaker 1: That's John Coffee, a professor at Columbia University Law School,
Speaker 1: and Peter Henning, a professor at Wayne State University, speaking
Speaker 1: with Bloomberg Law host Doing Grosso and Michael Best. You
Speaker 1: can listen to Bloomberg Law week days at one pm
Speaker 1: Wall Street Time here on Bloomberg Radio Now. Among the
Speaker 1: top legal stories from Bloomberg Law, US prosecutors have now
Speaker 1: charged a total of six Volkswagen executives in connection with
Speaker 1: a diesel emissions cheating scandal. Their indictments were part of
Speaker 1: a settlement of civil and criminal investigations into the case.
Speaker 1: V W agree to plead guilty to conspiracy and to
Speaker 1: pay four point three billion dollars in penalties. The US
Speaker 1: is preparing to file a complain against China over subsidies
Speaker 1: to aluminum producers. That's according to people briefed on the matter,
Speaker 1: who say the US will complain to the World Trade
Speaker 1: Organization that Chinese subsidies to domestic aluminum makers are suppressing
Speaker 1: global prices of the middle Yeah that's this morning's Bloomberg
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