OREANDA-NEWS. The Federal Reserve Board on Monday announced that it will seek a $1.2 million fine and a permanent ban on employment in the banking industry in an enforcement action against a foreign exchange (FX) trader who is alleged to have manipulated FX pricing benchmarks.

Christopher Ashton, a former FX trader at Barclays PLC, is alleged to have used electronic chat rooms to coordinate FX trading, facilitate manipulation of FX pricing benchmarks, disclose confidential customer information to traders at other organizations, and engage in other unsafe and unsound practices.