WICHITA, Kan. NCUA Monday evening filed a civil suit against 13 international banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase, alleging violations of federal and state anti-trust laws by manipulation of interest rates through the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) system.
The national credit union regulator alleged the manipulation of LIBOR, the benchmark for setting interest rates around the globe, resulted in a loss of income from investments and other assets held by five failed corporate credit unions: U.S. Central FCU, WesCorp FCU Members United FCU, Southwest FCU and Constitution Corporate FCU. The failure of the five wholesale credit unions is projected to cost NCUA $16 billion to resolve, which is being passed on as assessments to the nation’s 6,800 credit union.
“We have a responsibility to pursue recoveries through every available avenue against those who caused billions of dollars in losses to credit unions,” NCUA Chairman Debbie Matz said. “Some firms were manipulating international interest rates in a way that cost the five corporates to lose millions of dollars. Just as we are doing in our other suits, we are seeking to hold responsible parties accountable for their actions.”
NCUA claims the defendants in today’s action individually and collectively gave false interest-rate information through the LIBOR rate-setting process “to benefit their investments that were tied to LIBOR, to reduce their borrowing costs, to deceive the marketplace as to the true state of their creditworthiness, and to deprive investors of the interest rate payments to which they were entitled.” The false information created the impression the defendant banks were borrowing money at a lower interest rate than they were actually paying, NCUA alleged.
More than 40 suits have been filed in relation to the LIBOR manipulation. NCUA is one of the first federal financial regulators to sue in this area.
LIBOR is the average daily interest rate a group of leading financial institutions pay when they borrow from one another. The rate is set daily for 10 currencies around the world and affects interest rates on trillions of dollars of financial transactions of various kinds.
