US prosecutors take forex probe to London
But in a move that underscores the complexity of co-ordinated international probes with both regulatory and criminal elements, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority told the traders that for the FCA's purposes, the proceedings would be under so-called compelled conditions, one of the people said.
The FCA has powers to compel people to answer questions with no right to silence, while the US constitution includes a protection against self-incrimination. Evidence gathered by the FCA under compelled conditions then becomes problematic for US authorities to use. Material gleaned from FCA-compelled interviews cannot be used directly by UK criminal authorities either, unless individuals lied to the regulator during questioning.
Lawyers advising traders suspended in the wake of the authorities' probes said that the FCA's suggestion of an interview being simultaneously considered compelled by UK standards and voluntary by US ones had no legal standing, with one labelling it "weird and wrong".
The difference in how interviews are conducted matters because the stakes are higher in the US, which has opened a criminal investigation into alleged rigging of key forex benchmarks, while in the UK the probe remains a regulatory one. Prison sentences for white-collar crime tend to be higher in the US than the UK.
