The reach of the admitted Australian banking cartel that fixed rates in the foreign exchange market may cross the Indian Ocean.The Competition Commission of South Africa is escalating prosecutions of 16 banks, and has already gained admissions from one, Citi.ANZ and Macquarie feature in a list of banks referred by the Competition Commission to the nation's Competition Tribunal for prosecution in a collusion case.In a matter with parallels to the Malaysian ringgit case that was resolved under Australian jurisdiction in late 2016, the Commission said it had been "investigating a case of price fixing and market allocation in the trading of foreign currency pairs involving the Rand since April 2015."The Commission said it "found that from at least 2007, the respondents had a general agreement to collude on prices for bids, offers and bid-offer spreads for the spot trades in relation to currency trading involving US Dollar / Rand currency pair."Further, the Commission said it "found that the respondents manipulated the price of bids and offers through agreements to refrain from trading and creating fictitious bids and offers at particular times."Other banks under the gun are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan Chase, Investec, Standard New York Securities, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse, Standard Bank of South Africa, Commerzbank, Nomura, ABSA Bank Limited and Barclays.Employees of these banks allegedly used Bloomberg's instant messaging system (or chatroom), telephone conversations and meetings "to coordinate their bilateral and multilateral collusive trading activities. They assisted each other to reach the desired prices by coordinating trading times," the Commission said. "They reached agreements to refrain from trading, taking turns in transacting and by either pulling or holding trading activities on the Reuters currency trading platform. They also created fictitious bids and offers, distorting demand and supply in order to achieve their profit motives."The Commission said it was seeking an order from the Tribunal declaring that the respondents contravened the Competition Act and "are liable for the payment of an administrative penalty equal to ten per cent of their annual turnover."In December 2016, the Federal Court of Australia finalised a matter in line with a settlement between the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission against ANZ and Macquarie.In that case, the Court was told that, on a number of occasions during 2011, ANZ and Macquarie, through the actions of traders employed by them in their Singapore offices, "attempted to make arrangements which indirectly provided for the fixing of the price for Malaysian ringgit forward contracts."