RIA Compliance Blog
A federal court in the Southern District of New York is currently considering a motion filed last month that would overturn a jury verdict convicting a former Forex Trader at JP Morgan, Akshay Aiyer, of conspiring to rig bids in Forex transactions. The motion argues that the testimony of alleged co-conspirators Christopher Cummins of Citigroup and Jason Katz of Barclays was unreliable and false, and should not serve as a valid basis for the conviction.
Another aspect of the case that should be of interest to compliance officers of financial services firms was the role that text messages and group chats played in the trial of Mr. Aiver. During the trial in November 2019, Mr. Cummins testified that he and defendant Aiyer communicated via text message and private chat rooms in order to avoid being caught by the banks’ compliance personnel. Cummins pled guilty in 2017 but testified as a cooperating witness for the U.S. Justice Department in the case against Aiyer.
The cases against the US traders are only a part of a larger scheme involving other banks as well. In May 2017, the European Union levied fines totaling €1.7 Billion on Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Royal Bank of Scotland and Mitsubishi UFJ. The only firm not fined by the EU was UBS, who first detected and reported the fraudulent scheme. The importance of being able to monitor and detect these types of communications cannot be ignored.