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(Adds details on OCC case)
By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department onTuesday brought charges against three former traders at JPMorganChase & Co, Citigroup Inc and Barclays Plc arising from a global probe into the manipulation offoreign exchange rates at major banks.
Richard Usher, formerly of JPMorgan, Rohan Ramchandani,formerly of Citigroup, and Christopher Ashton, formerly ofBarclays, were charged with conspiring to restrain trade in anindictment filed at a federal court in Manhattan.
The case came after JPMorgan, Barclays, the Royal Bank ofScotland and a Citigroup unit pleaded guilty in May 2015to conspiring to manipulate currency rates, agreeing at thattime to pay more than $2.5 billion in criminal fines.
Those plea deals contributed to the more than $10 billionthat some of the world's biggest banks have agreed to pay toresolve U.S. and European probes into the manipulation offoreign exchange rates.
The indictment said that from 2007 to 2013, Usher,Ramchandani and Ashton schemed with other euro-dollar tradersbelonging to an electronic chat group called "The Cartel" tosuppress competition in the currency spot market.
Usher, JPMorgan's former head of G10 spot trading, andRamchandani, Citigroup's ex-head of European spot foreignexchange trading, left both banks in 2014. Ashton, Barclays'ex-global head of spot trading, was at the British bank until2015.
All three traders were based in the United Kingdom,according to court papers and their lawyers. All three remainout of custody, the Justice Department said.
In addition to the criminal case, the U.S. Office of theComptroller of the Currency fined Usher and Ramchandani $5million each, and the banking regulator banned them from workingin the U.S. banking industry.
The U.S. charges came after the UK Serious Fraud Office(SFO) in March said it had closed its own investigation withoutany individuals being charged, saying there was "insufficientevidence for a realistic prospect of conviction."
Lawyers for Ramchandani and Usher in statements criticizedthe Justice Department's decision to bring charges after the SFOhad decided not to do so.
"The UK authorities looked at the matter very carefully andconcluded that there were no offences, and we continue tobelieve that Mr. Usher has done nothing wrong," said JonathanPickworth, a lawyer for Usher.
Stephen Pollard, a lawyer for Ramchandani, said his clienthad been investigated for over 18 months in the UK and was notprosecuted.
"It is unacceptable for the American DoJ to by-pass the SFOdecision and seek to prosecute conduct undertaken on Britishsoil by British citizens where the British regulators haveconfirmed there was no criminal offence," Pollard said in astatement.
A lawyer for Ashton declined to comment.
To date, three other individuals have faced U.S. chargesstemming from the probe.
Last week, a former trader at Barclays and BNP Paribas SA, Jason Katz, pleaded guilty to participating in arate-fixing conspiracy, becoming the first person to admitcriminal wrongdoing in the probe.
In July, an HSBC Holdings Plc executive, MarkJohnson, was arrested and charged along with a former executivefor participating in a fraudulent scheme involving a $3.5billion currency transaction. Johnson has pleaded notguilty.
The case is U.S. v. Usher et al, U.S. District Court,Southern District of New York, No. 17-cr-19. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; additional reporting byJamie McGeever in London; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli & SimonCameron-Moore)
