Barclays Fined for the second time this year for rigging foreign financial markets

For the second time in a year, Barclays is facing another fine from America's banking regulators for its questionable currency trading methods. 

According to the Business Insider the New York Department of Financial Services fined Barclays for an amount of $100 million for how the bank operates its electronic currency trading. Just this May, the bank paid $485 million to settle claims for manipulating foreign exchange markets. The fine it paid in May is part of its £1.5 billion settlement to the Department of Justice and the Financial Conduct Authority and other US and UK authorities.   

The DFS accuses Barclays of engineering its computer systems to manipulate the financial markets. In a report by This is Money, the issue started when former ICAP broker Darrel Read denied his part in rigging interest rates along with former UBS trader Tom Hayes, who got jailed. Read is now being tried at the Southwark Crown Court for rigging Libor along with six other interdealer brokers. Besides Read, the Financial Conduct Authority has also fined former investment analyst Mothahir Miah 139,000 for short changing investors to increase his bonus from January 2010 to October 2012.

Other banks are also involved in the currency trading manipulations along with Barclays. US agencies are also looking into the Deutsche Bank for allegedly rigging foreign exchange trading, according to a report by the Express & Star. Meanwhile, there are other banks that are under the US mortgage litigation for their contributions to the 2008 financial crisis. One of the notable banks included in this litigation is the Royal Bank of Scotland. Federal prosecutors are also charging criminal cases against executives of the Royal Bank of Scotland and JP Morgan for selling flawed mortgage securities.

Incoming Barclays CEO Jes Staley is now pressured on making sure that the litigation won't affect the banks new strategy to focus on smaller investment banks, which are more profitable.