FCA v. Christian Bittar (benchmark submission rigging, 2018)

Judgment entered

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In September 2018 the FCA prohibited former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar and imposed no fine, after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud over EURIBOR manipulation and was sentenced to five years and four months in prison. The £6.5 million penalty in its earlier decision notice was dropped.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Financial Conduct Authority issued this final notice on 14 September 2018. Its April 2017 decision notice had found that between 9 March 2005 and 4 June 2009 Bittar was knowingly concerned in Deutsche Bank's breach of Principle 5 in relation to EURIBOR, and had proposed a £6,500,000 penalty and a prohibition. He referred it to the Upper Tribunal, then pleaded guilty on 2 March 2018 to conspiracy to defraud on substantially the same conduct and on 20 July 2018 was sentenced to five years and four months in prison and ordered to pay £2.5 million in confiscation.

The FCA considered that the sentence had met the purposes of the penalty, so by consent the Tribunal directed that no penalty be imposed and dismissed his reference on the prohibition, which stands. The record had shown the status as dismissed and £6.5 million as a penalty; the penalty was not imposed, so that figure is cleared.

This library tags the matter as benchmark submission rigging because the conduct is manipulating EURIBOR.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Benchmark submission rigging — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2018-09-14 FCA final notice

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• FCA final notice

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.