LONDON â€" Regulators in Britain said on Monday that they had begun criminal proceedings against three additional former Barclays employees suspected in the manipulation of a global benchmark interest rate.
The Serious Fraud Office said that Jay Vijay Merchant, Alex Julian Pabon and Ryan Michael Reich, all former employees of Barclays in New York, would face charges of conspiracy to defraud as part of the agency’s investigation into the manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.
The three men, who all currently live in the United States, are set to appear in Westminster Magistrates’ Court next month.
The agency, which prosecutes financial crime in Britain, did not provide additional details about the accusations.
Lawyers for the men did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Three other former Barclays employees were charged in February, just over a year and a half after Barclays became the first bank to settle with American and British authorities over manipulation of global benchmark interest rates. It paid $450 million in penalties.
Barclays declined comment on Monday.
The new criminal proceedings are the latest development in a broadening investigation into the manipulation of major interest rates â€" a scandal that has caught up some of the world’s largest banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.
Libor is one of the main rates used to determine the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars in loans, including many adjustable-rate mortgages in the United States.
Twelve people in total are now facing criminal charges in Britain, including the three former Barclays employees charged on Monday. The authorities in the United States have separately brought criminal charges against several of the individuals charged in Britain.
In February, the Serious Fraud Office began criminal proceedings against Peter C. Johnson and Jonathan J. Mathew, both former rate submitters at Barclays, and Stylianos Contogoulas, a former Barclays trader.
British prosecutors have said they have identified as many as 22 people as potential co-conspirators in the investigation, but have only named the 12 people charged criminally.
To set Libor and other rates, banks submit the rates at which they would be prepared to lend money to one another, on an unsecured basis, in various currencies and at varying maturities. Investigations in the last two years have found evidence that traders at the various banks benefited from falsely reported rates.
Barclays, R.B.S., UBS, the Dutch lender Rabobank and ICAP have combined to pay more than $3 billion in fines to British and American authorities in the investigation of manipulation of various Libor-linked interest rates.
Last December, antitrust regulators in the European Union separately agreed to settle with eight financial institutions over allegations of collusion to manipulate Libor related to the Japanese yen and the euro interbank offered rate, or Euribor. Six of the institutions, including Deutsche Bank, agreed to pay a combined 1.7 billion euros, or about $2.33 billion.
