Swiss bank hit with $1.5B fine over fraud, bribes

[NewsCaster]

By ReutersZURICH - Swiss bank UBS was hit with a $1.5 billion fine on Wednesday, admitting to fraud, paying bribes to brokers and "pervasive" manipulation of global benchmark interest rates by dozens of staff in a deal with international authorities.

The penalty agreed with U.S., UK and Swiss regulators is more than three times the $450 million fine levied on Britain's Barclays in June, also for rigging the Libor benchmark rate used to price financial contracts around the globe.

It is the second-largest fine paid by a bank and comes a week after Britain's HSBC agreed to pay the biggest ever penalty - $1.92 billion - to settle a probe in the United States into laundering money for drug cartels.

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