Jail for Rate Riggers May Be Enshrined in EU Law This Year

European Union lawmakers should enact tougher punishments for market abusers, including jail time, by the end of the year in response to the Libor scandal, the bloc’s financial-services chief said.

A culture of banks rigging interest-rate benchmarks shows the importance of an agreement on tougher market-abuse rules, Michel Barnier told a panel of EU lawmakers in Brussels today. EU regulators are also investigating possible breaches in cartel rules from both banks and brokers in the setting of Libor, Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s competition commissioner, said in his testimony to the European Parliament.