PARIS, March 6 (Reuters) - BNP Paribas, France'sbiggest bank, has suspended its head of spot currency trading aspart of a long-running global investigation into possiblecurrency market manipulation, the Wall Street Journal said onThursday, citing unnamed sources.
BNP Paribas declined to comment on the reported suspensionof London-based Bob de Groot. De Groot did not respond toemailed requests for comment and calls to his office number weredirected to BNP Paribas's communications department.
Regulators around the world - including Britain's FinancialConduct Authority and the U.S. Department of Justice whichformally opened investigations in October last year - arelooking into possible wrongdoing in the $5.3 trillion-a-dayforeign exchange market.
More than 20 traders have been placed on leave, suspended orfired by global banks in recent months, including the chiefdealers at currency trading giants Citigroup, JPMorganChase, Barclays and UBS.
The Bank of England suspended a staff member on Wednesday aspart of an internal investigation into what it knew about the alleged manipulation of reference exchange rates.
The BoE said it had found no evidence that its staffcolluded in any manipulation or shared confidential clientinformation, adding that it had made the suspension pending aprobe into compliance with its own internal control processes.
The central bank also released minutes that said suchallegations had been raised as long ago as July 2006.