Dec 30 (Reuters) - British oil and gas group BP isinvestigating whether its in-house traders were involved inrigging the foreign exchange market, the Financial Timesreported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The investigation, which is not being carried out by anyfinancial regulator, was prompted after a Bloomberg report citedundated messages sent to BP's employees by a network offoreign-exchange traders at four major banks about plannedcurrency trades "sometimes hours before they happened", the FTreported. (http://on.ft.com/1wyUHUA)
BP could not be reached for comment outside regular businesshours.
Last month, financial regulators in the United States, theU.K. and Switzerland fined six major banks a total of $4.3billion for failing to stop traders from trying to manipulatethe foreign exchange market. The fines followed a year-longglobal investigation.
The European Commission also has been investigatingallegations that BP manipulated oil and biofuel prices. (Reporting by Ankush Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by DavidGregorio)