YEREVAN, July 3. /ARKA/. Brazil’s antitrust agency is investigating banking giants Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, Deutsche Bank AG and a long list of their peers on suspicion of forming a cartel to manipulate the exchange rate of the Brazilian currency, the real, The Wall Street Journal reports.

There are “strong indications” of the use of anticompetitive practices in the foreign-exchange market by the three big banks and 12 other U.S. and overseas lenders, the agency, known as CADE, said Thursday.

The agency also named 30 individuals in the investigation.

CADE said there was evidence the banks and the individuals worked together to fix the exchange rate, coordinate the buying and selling of currencies, manipulate the Brazilian central bank’s PTAX reference exchange rate and impede the operations of other banks operating in Brazil’s foreign-exchange market, among other things.

About $240 billion was traded on Brazil’s spot market in May and about $311 billion was traded on its futures market in the same month. That includes purchases of dollars by Brazilians heading to Florida for vacation and U.S. companies buying reais to invest in Brazil. –0--