Sept 24 (Reuters) - Britain's leading fraud prosecutor isplanning to ask the government to increase its budget by over 50percent to help fund investigations into the allegedmanipulation of currency markets and the Libor benchmarkinterest rate, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing a source.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which has a 37 million pound($60.64 million) budget for the fiscal year ending March 2015,is also planning to use the extra money for its ongoinginvestigation into alleged bribery at Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc, Bloomberg said on its website. (http://bloom.bg/1rm2ebA)
It added that the SFO's request, which could be made incoming weeks, would probably exceed the 19 million pounds ofadditional funding the fraud agency sought in January for theprevious fiscal year.
The SFO said at the time that it needed the extra money inpart to pay for its inquiry into Libor benchmark fixing, a probeinto Barclays fundraising from Qatar and to meet costslinked to a 300 million pound damages suit launched by theTchenguiz brothers property developers.
The nature of the SFO's work means it needs additionalfunding from time to time for its very largest and most complexinvestigations and prosecutions, Bloomberg quoted the SFO assaying in an emailed statement.
The SFO could not be reached for comment late outside ofregular business hours on Wednesday.(1 US dollar = 0.6101 British pound) (Reporting by Richa Naidu in Bangalore; Editing by CynthiaOsterman)