HSBC Holdings on Thursday agreed to pay $101.5 million to pioneer calm down a U.S. criminal probe into the rigging of currency transactions, which has already led the persuasion of one of its former bankers.
The payment includes a $63.1 million fine with an increment of $38.4 million in restitution to a corporate client, according to a deferred prosecution settlement filed on Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York.
In the camp with the U.S. Department of Justice, HSBC also agreed to bolster its internal oversights, and admitted and accepted responsibility for wrongdoing underlying two criminal wire humbug charges filed on Thursday against the bank, according to the agreement.
Tabled prosecution agreements let companies avoid criminal charges so long as they agree with the terms.
Thursday’s sanctions came a month after HSBC was freed from a five-year deferred prosecution settlement over its alleged dealings with Mexican drug cartels and other profit launderers, and conducting of transactions for customers in countries barred by U.S. sanctions. It was fined $1.92 billion in that come what may.
In October, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Mark Johnson, the recent head of HSBC’s global foreign exchange cash trading desk, of following ahead of a $3.5 billion currency transaction by his client Cairn Get-up-and-go Plc.
Johnson has yet to be sentenced. Stuart Scott, HSBC’s former head of legal tender trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was also charged in that event and has fought extradition.
HSBC agreed to pay Cairn $8.08 million directed a settlement reached in July, which the Justice Department said it honoured as “full restitution” to that company.
In a statement on Thursday, HSBC weighted the $63.1 million fine reflected a 15 percent reduction that felt into account the bank’s cooperation and “extensive remediation” efforts.
The state is U.S. v. HSBC Holdings Plc, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 18-cr-00030.