The Justice Department plans to continue the campaign as it pursues guilty pleas from other bank subsidiaries suspected of reporting false interest rates, according to the prosecutors and the lawyers who requested anonymity to discuss the cases. Authorities are scrutinizing Citigroup, whose Japanese unit is suspected of rate manipulation, and prosecutors recently accused one former trader there of colluding with other banks in a vast rate-rigging conspiracy.
Prosecutors want the rate-rigging investigation to serve as a template for other financial fraud cases. Two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described a plan to eventually wring an admission of guilt from an entire bank.
"This Department of Justice will continue to hold financial institutions that break the law criminally responsible," Lanny A. Breuer, the departing head of the agency's criminal division, said in an interview.
