EU charges four banks over alleged bond cartel, by Andreas Framke.

Deutsche Bank, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse and another bank have been charged by European Union antitrust regulators for being in a bond trading cartel. …

If found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules the banks could face fines up to 10 per cent of their global turnover …

Deutsche Bank … has paid more than $3 billion to resolve investigations it manipulated benchmark interest rates including Libor which are used to price loans and contracts around the world.

Deutsche Bank HQ, Frankfurt.

Credit Agricole, which received a 114.6 million euro EU fine in 2016 for being part of a Euribor cartel, confirmed it had received the EU charge sheet …

“The four banks exchanged commercially sensitive information and co-ordinated on prices concerning U.S. dollar denominated supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency bonds, known as ‘SSA bonds’,” the Commission said in a statement.

Regulators worldwide have penalized the financial industry billions of euros in recent years for rigging various financial benchmarks.

Market after market is found to be rigged, but it rarely even makes the news. The banks keep on doing it, because the fines if found out are less than the profits for cheating. Nearly everyone wants to borrow money, so nearly everyone sucks up to the banks or is in debt to them, so little is done.