This was announced by South Africa's National Treasury on Friday after the South African Competition Commission and Standard Chartered Bank settled a case of manipulation of the rand value.
Legislation will be introduced next year in South Africa to widen oversight of trading in over-the-counter derivatives and foreign currency, the National Treasury said on Friday.
The decision came after Standard Chartered Bank implicated in manipulating the South African rand and U.S. dollar exchange rate from 2007 to 2013, agreed to pay a R43 million ($2.3 million) fine imposed by the South African Competition Commission.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress said last week that all the 28 banks found to have manipulated the currency should be charged with economic sabotage. It noted that other banks under scrutiny by the commission had denied wrongdoing and continue to challenge the allegations.
The Treasury said the malpractice wasn’t to blame for a slide in the rand, which has fallen 47% against the dollar in the past decade amid concerns over crime, corruption and economic stagnation.
“Whilst the wrongdoing described by the Competition Tribunal harmed individual clients, it would not have influenced the depreciating trend of the currency since 2013, the level of which is driven by broader changes in the global and domestic economy,”
it said.
The currency-manipulation saga started in 2015, when the country’s Competition Commission alleged that banks including JPMorgan Chase., BNP Paribas SA, Bank of America Corp. and Investec colluded to rig the value of the rand against the dollar.
The inquiry followed a global probe into currency manipulation that was exposed two years earlier, triggering investigations in the US and the UK, and resulting in billions of dollars in settlements.
Source: News24
