Former RBS banker sues ex-employer for racial discrimination, unfair dismissal

A former bank manager has sued Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc over claims of racial discrimination and unfair dismissal in relation to an investigation on Libor-rigging. Jezri Mohideen, who previously served as the former head of rates trading for Europe and Asia-Pacific of RBS, had filed the lawsuit at an employment tribunal in London. Court documents did not provide any further details about Mohideen's case, but Bloomberg noted that he is the second former employee of RBS who had sued the bank in London over the probe of global interest-rate benchmarks manipulation.

An instant-message conversation in 2007 indicated that Mohideen, who was then head of yen products in Singapore, instructed his colleagues to lower the bank's London interbank offered rate submission. Following the revelation of the conversation, RBS suspended Mohideen, and he later had left the bank in October 2012, according to the register of finance professionals of the UK markets regulator.

When Mohideen was contacted by the news agency in 2012, he denied accusations that he had pressured colleagues to submit false rates.

Bloomberg said that ever since the Libor manipulation had blown up, regulators had imposed fines totaling over $6 billion. It also triggered a European competition probe and several criminal prosecutions of some of the traders allegedly involved in the Libor manipulation. RBS had struck an accord with US and UK regulators over Libor manipulation, agreeing to pay around $600 million in fines. Bloomberg also noted that RBS was among the six companies who had been fined a record 1.7 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in December last year by the European Union.

Should Mohideen wins his case against his former employer, the news agency said damages in employment tribunal case in the UK are capped normally at around 70,000 pounds ($117,000), with the exception that there is finding of discrimination or if the complainant had won whistleblower status.

Tags

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, London Interbank Offered Rate manipulation, UK employment tribunals

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