Financial crime ‘hot spots’ – empirical evidence from the foreign exchange market

Abstract

This paper uses a natural experiment to investigate the effects of collusive benchmark manipulation on foreign exchange (FX) market characteristics. Constructing digit-based measures, the empirical analysis detects anomalies throughout different digit positions of currency pairs in prosecuted FX data. The findings contribute to the understanding of suspicious patterns during the World Markets Company and Reuters benchmark window around the London close and suggest a simple, practical, and useful approach to screening other financial benchmarks, markets, and time periods.