One of the scams was called the "Three-Way Banana Split" and another was called the "Forex-Essex Express".

A raft of banks from around the world have been fined a combined €1.07 billion ($1.2 billion) by the European Commission for manipulating the global foreign exchange market. 

The banks are Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan, MUFG and Royal Bank of Scotland.

The executive arm of the European Union set out its actions in two settlement decisions. It said the banks formed cartels in the spot foreign exchange market for 11 currencies - the euro, British pound, Japanese Yen, Swiss franc, US, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian dollars, and Danish, Swedish and Norwegian crowns.

The first decision, regarding the “Forex - Three-Way Banana Split” cartel, imposed a total fine of €811 million on Barclays, RBS, Citigroup and JP Morgan. The second decision (regarding the so-called “Forex-Essex Express” cartel) imposed a total fine of €257.7 million on Barclays, RBS and MUFG Bank (formerly Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi).

UBS is an addressee of both decisions, but was not fined as it revealed the existence of the cartels to the Commission, the Commission said in a statement yesterday. 

As reported previously, lenders have been punished with multi-billion fines for rigging benchmarks used to set prices for borrowing, savings and other products used by tens of millions of citizens.

“Companies and people depend on banks to exchange money to carry out transactions in foreign countries. Foreign exchange spot trading activities are one of the largest markets in the world, worth billions of euros every day. Today we have fined Barclays, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup, JPMorgan and MUFG Bank and these cartel decisions send a clear message that the Commission will not tolerate collusive behaviour in any sector of the financial markets. The behaviour of these banks undermined the integrity of the sector at the expense of the European economy and consumers,” Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said.