Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest bank, has been fined $2.5 billion by U.S. and U.K. regulators for trying to manipulate the so-called LIBOR rate, a benchmark for interbank loans, which in turn is used to set interest rates on everything from credit card debt to mortgages.
The German bank is one of eight financial institutions, including Swiss-based UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland, that were caught up in the scandal, which involved dozens of traders and managers and spanned a four-year period from 2005-2009.
As the BBC writes: "traders colluded to set these benchmark rates, hoping to improve their trading positions. The regulators released email exchanges between traders and submitters — the people who provide the information on which rate Libor and Euribor is set each day."
At least 29 Deutsche Bank employees were involved in manipulating the LIBOR, which stands for London Interbank Offered Rate.
As part of the settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, the German bank agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud "for engaging in a scheme to defraud so-called counterparties — its trading partners — while the parent company agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement which requires the bank to continue cooperating with federal prosecutors in a continuing investigation and to retain a corporate monitor for three years," according to The Los Angeles Times.
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.