New York: A senior HSBC Holdings manager has been arrested and charged alongside a former foreign exchange executive with engaging in a scheme to front-run a $3.5 billion (Dh12.8 billion) transaction by one of the bank’s clients, US prosecutors said on Wednesday. Mark Johnson, HSBC’s global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, and Stuart Scott, its ex-head of cash trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, were charged in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn. Both men were charged with wire fraud conspiracy, in a case that a person familiar with the matter said was the first against individuals to flow out of a US. Justice Department probe of foreign-exchange rigging at global banks.