South Africa Probes Foreign Exchange Traders on Price Fixing

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South Africa’s Competition Commission started an investigation into banks including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. for allegedly rigging the foreign currency market, two years after a global probe into the practice began.

The antitrust agency will focus on currency trades involving the South African rand in spot, forward and futures contracts, it said in a statement Tuesday. The group of 11 named by the commission, which also includes BNP Paribas SA, Barclays Plc’s African operations and a unit of Standard Chartered Plc, may have colluded by using electronic messaging software to coordinate trades when quoting prices to customers, it said.