By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department was set to bring charges on Tuesday against three ex-traders at JPMorgan Chase & Co (N:JPM), Citigroup Inc (N:C) and Barclays Plc (L:BARC) arising from a probe into the manipulation of foreign-exchange prices at major banks, a person familiar with the matter said.
Richard Usher, formerly of JPMorgan, Rohan Ramchandani, formerly of Citigroup, and Chris Ashton, formerly of Barclays, are expected to face criminal charges in a case filed in federal court in New York, the person said.
The expected charges were first reported by Bloomberg News. Lawyers for Usher, Ramchandani and Ashton could not be immediately identified.
The case comes after JPMorgan, Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland (L:RBS) and a Citigroup unit pleaded guilty in May 2015 to conspiring to manipulate currency prices, agreeing at that time to pay more than $2.5 billion in criminal fines.
Prosecutors have said that from 2007 to 2013, euro-dollar traders at the banks belonging to an electronic chat group called "The Cartel" manipulated benchmark exchange rates in an effort to increase their profits.
Last week, a former trader at Barclays and BNP Paribas SA (PA:BNPP), Jason Katz, pleaded guilty to participating in a price-fixing conspiracy, becoming the first person to admit criminal wrongdoing in the probe.
He was the third person to date to face U.S. criminal charges in connection with the foreign-exchange probe.
In July, an HSBC Holdings Plc (L:HSBA) executive, Mark Johnson, was arrested and charged along with a former executive for participating in a fraudulent scheme involving a $3.5 billion currency transaction. Johnson has pleaded not guilty.