(Adds details of allegations, comments, bylines)
By Jonathan Stempel and Aruna Viswanatha
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - A former RabobankNV trader pleaded guilty on Tuesday for his role in manipulatingLibor, becoming the first person to admit guilt in a worldwideprobe into alleged manipulation of interest rate benchmarks.
Takayuki Yagami, a Japanese national who specialized in yenderivatives, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commitwire fraud and bank fraud before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoffin Manhattan, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
The government said Yagami admitted to conspiring with threeother former Rabobank traders, who were criminally charged inJanuary, to submit false, fraudulent Yen Libor submissions tobenefit their own trading positions.
"This was the ultimate inside job," Leslie Caldwell, whoheads the Justice Department's criminal division, said in astatement. "Traders illegally influenced the very interest rateon which their trades were based, using fraud to gain an unfairadvantage."
Rabobank agreed last October to pay $1 billion to resolveU.S. and European probes into Libor manipulation. This includeda $325 million criminal penalty for the Dutch bank and adeferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department.
Libor underpins hundreds of trillions of dollars oftransactions, and is used to set interest rates on credit cards,student loans and mortgages.
U.S. and European regulators have been probing whether banksattempted to manipulate the rate to benefit their own tradingpositions. Nine people, including Yagami, have been charged bythe Justice Department.
"Manipulating Libor effectively rigs the global financialsystem, compromising the fairness of world markets," AttorneyGeneral Eric Holder said in a statement.
Yagami is not scheduled to be sentenced until June 2017, adelay that could allow time for cooperation with governmentprobes. His lawyer, Matthew Levine, did not immediately respondto requests for comment.
The previously charged former Rabobank traders are PaulRobson, a senior trader in London; Paul Thompson, an Australianwho ran a money market and derivative trading desk in Singapore;and Tetsuya Motomura, a senior trader and supervisor in Tokyo.
Michael McGovern, a lawyer for Robson; Marc Litt, a lawyerfor Thompson; and Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Motomura, didnot immediately respond to requests for comment.
'NO WORRIES MATE'
Prosecutors said the manipulation involving the Rabobanktraders and others ran from roughly May 2006 to January 2011.
As an example, they cited Robson's alleged Sept. 21, 2007submission of a one-month Yen Libor rate of 0.90 percent, upfrom 0.83 percent the prior day and above the 0.85 percent thathe said "bookies" had predicted, after Yagami had told him he"would appreciate" a higher submission.
"No worries mate ... there's bigger crooks in the marketthan us guys!" Robson allegedly responded.
Rabobank was the fifth financial institution to settle withregulators worldwide over Libor manipulation. It joinedBritain's Barclays Plc, ICAP Plc and Royal Bankof Scotland Group Plc, and Switzerland's UBS AG. (Reporting by Aruna Viswanatha in Washington, D.C.; and JosephAx, Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing byDoina Chiacu and Tom Brown)
Barclays (BARC)