Mark Johnson, the former head of forex cash trading at HSBC Holdings Plc, is in court in the US facing charges of front-running a $3.5 billion currency deal. Johnson has asked the court to overturn his conviction, saying the government has erred in criminalizing an arm’s length transaction. He is currently president of Spectra Markets.
He was accused of front-running a Cairn trade and profiting at the expense of his clients. Scott had acted as the head of HSBC’s cash trading desk for Europe and the Middle East. His client was a London-listed exploration company that was selling foreign subsidiaries in India.
Last year, a federal jury convicted Johnson on nine counts of wire fraud and one of conspiracy. He is the first banker to face trial in the U.S. and was sentenced to two years in prison. He was given the same sentence in the U.K., but was denied home detention.
The court case was the latest twist in a 10-year-old global currency trading scandal. The scandal has cost HSBC over $600 million in fines and penalties. The trial is expected to be concluded on Thursday. The bank has also won a U.S. case brought by a former client who claimed that HSBC traders had front-running clients over 15 years ago.
Stuart Scott was the head of FX cash trading for HSBC Bank plc. He was a senior executive and lived in London. In 2011, he was the head of FX cash trading for the EMEA region. He has since filed a motion for a hearing before the court to challenge the indictment.
The court found that Johnson cheated a client out of millions of dollars by using fraudulent schemes. The client had hired HSBC to handle a foreign exchange transaction for them. They had signed a contract with the bank that required the bank to keep the details confidential. Instead, Johnson and his co-conspirators cheated the client by causing the price of Pound Sterling to rise.
