Scotiabank pushed to reveal internal emails in gold fixing case

Scotiabank is also facing a lawsuit in the Manhattan court in which investors have accused it of conspiring with Deutsche Bank, HSBC and UBS to rig silver prices.

Canada’s Bank of Nova Scotia, one of the five banks said to have manipulated the gold market, which is worth trillions of dollars in trading value per year, will have to turn over internal emails and other correspondence spanning several years.

Daniel Brockett, the New York lawyer who is spearheading the US lawsuit, told Financial Post that the banks will also have to produce all relevant chat room instant messages and any other written communication they exchanged, whatever the media.

The move comes as a US judge said last week that gold investors could go ahead with their lawsuit accusing four major banks of conspiring for a decade to fix prices and exploit distortions at the expense of investors in global markets for the precious metal.

Involved banks will also have to produce all relevant chat room instant messages and any other written communication they exchanged, whatever the media.

US District Court for the Southern District of New York Valerie Caproni, however, reduced the class period to six years ending in 2012, and dismissed a claim of unjust enrichment.

Investors allege the banks conspired from 2004 to 2013 to fix prices for gold. They did not estimate the size of the banks’ bullion portfolios, but said the gold derivatives market alone was as large as $650 billion during the class period.

Deutsche Bank AG settled related claims in April, and the investors are said to seek preliminary approval of such settlement.

The Bank of Nova Scotia, known as Scotiabank, is also facing another lawsuit in the Manhattan court in which investors have accused it of conspiring with Deutsche Bank, HSBC and UBS to rig silver prices through a daily meeting known as the Silver Fix.

UBS did not set the benchmarks, but was accused of conspiring to exploit the silver fix. The bank has previously disclosed that it launched an internal probe of its precious metals business in addition to its forex investigation.

In 2014 and after 117 years of being set between banks, the daily price setting process for global silver prices moved to an electronic platform run by GME Group and Thomson Reuters in London.

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