The MAS has proposed to make it a criminal offence to manipulate market benchmarks - an issue that continues to see regulators hunt down alleged wrong-doers in a variety of markets around the world.

Singapore’s financial regulator and de facto central bank proposes to make it a crime to fiddle benchmark rates, as global regulators wrestle with recent scandals and ongoing allegations of market rigging.

Earlier this week, the Monetary Authority of Singapore set out proposals under which the manipulation of any financial benchmark in the city-state will be treated as a criminal offence, with miscreants subject to civil sanctions, it said in a statement. The powers will apply to acts happening in Singapore and involving benchmarks administered in the jurisdiction, it said.

The move follows a consultation in 2013 on the matter.

“The proposed regulatory framework will deter manipulation of financial benchmarks and enhance the integrity of benchmarks set in Singapore,” Lee Boon Ngiap, assistant managing director, MAS, said.

Last June, the regulator censured 20 banks for trying to rig benchmark interest rates and ordered them to set aside as much as S$12 billion ($9.6 billion) at zero interest ahead of steps to improve controls. The banks included ING, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Oversea-Chinese Bank Corp. Barclays, Credit Agriciole, DBS, Deutsche Bankk Standard Chartered, United Overseas Bank, ANZ, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Macquarie, HSBC, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Elsewhere in the world, there remain allegations that precious metals markets have been manipulated. Deutsche Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC have been accused of manipulating prices in the multi-billion dollar market in a lawsuit filed late last week (Reuters). The suit was filed in a New York district court by J Scott Nicholson, a resident of Washington DC and alleges that the banks, which oversee the century-old silver fix, manipulated the physical and COMEX futures market since January 2007. The London gold fix market has drawn regulatory scrutiny.

In the summer of 2012, criminal settlements involving Barclays revealed a number of banks had manipulated interbank interest rates, such as the LIBOR benchmark. The saga led to the resignation of Barclays’ then-chief executive Robert Diamond and saw a number of firms bolster – they said – their compliance procedures. Royal Bank of Scotland was also one of the banks to be punished for LIBOR manipulation, along with UBS.