US charges former Barclays forex trader with fraud

London: The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged a former Barclays foreign exchange trader over his alleged role in a scheme to defraud a client of the bank, the DoJ said.

Robert Bogucki, the former head of foreign exchange trading in New York for the British bank, is alleged to have manipulated forex options before a large trade by computer and software maker Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) in 2011, using a practice known as “front-running”.

A spokesman for Barclays declined to comment. Bogucki could not immediately be reached outside US business hours. According to the DoJ indictment, Bogucki is alleged to have misused information provided to him by HP before the company’s planned acquisition of a British-based company.