Anshu Jain acquitted?

Germany's financial supervisory authority, BaFin, has cleared Deutsche Bank Co-CEO Anshu Jain of allegations he may have known about or actively aided manipulation by individual traders and banks of the Libor (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate), which sets out the average rate banks pay to borrow from one another.

The German business daily Handelsblatt reported Monday that after a two-year probe, BaFin regulators have come to the conclusion that there's no hard evidence suggesting that Jain had played a part in the interest rate rigging scandal that rocked several big banks across the world.

The newspaper said the authority will therefore abstain from any harsh punitive measures against the top executive, including enforcement of his resignation.

Final report pending

BaFin was not immediately available for comment, with financial experts saying the institution's final report would only come out in early 2015.

Worldwide, regulators have been investigating to what extent traders or whole banks had manipulated Libor or Euribor rates to secure illegal profits.

It turned out that some financial actors had reduced their regular Libor submissions to protect their reputation from negative speculation which arose as a result of higher rate submissions in comparison with other banks - i.e. the banks involved in manipulation wanted to make themselves look stronger.