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