LONDON (AP) ― Lloyds Banking Group is paying $369 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle allegations it manipulated a key global interest rate.

Lloyds, one of the world’s largest banks, on Monday became the sixth financial firm sanctioned in the international rate-rigging scandal. The U.S. and British regulators said Lloyds attempted to manipulate, and in some cases succeeded, in manipulating the London interbank offered rate, known as LIBOR.

The LIBOR, the rate used by banks to borrow from each other, affects trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages, bonds and consumer loans.

Under an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, Lloyds will be allowed to avoid criminal prosecution in exchange for admitting responsibility for misconduct and continuing to cooperate in the investigation of major banks’ actions regarding LIBOR. 

The $369 million that Lloyds is paying includes about $178 million levied by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, an $86 million criminal penalty to the Justice Department and a $105 million civil penalty to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The misconduct by Lloyds occurred between May 2006 and 2009, according to the British and U.S. regulators. They said traders at Lloyds rigged the estimates of borrowing costs submitted by the bank to help set the LIBOR rate, to benefit their own trading positions and those of their friends.

British banks Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, and Rabobank of the Netherlands have also been fined for LIBOR rigging. Nine individuals have been criminally charged by the Justice Department. The settlements with Lloyds bring the banks’ total payments to date to nearly $4 billion.

“Because investors and consumers rely on LIBOR’s integrity, rate-rigging fundamentally undermines confidence in financial markets,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said in a statement.

Exchanges among traders and bank employees who submitted reports for setting LIBOR show, quoted by the regulators, show a lively stream of apparent efforts to artificially lower or raise the rates. Among the quotes cited in phone conversations, emails and instant-message chats were: “Obviously we got the Libors down for you,” ’’Will be setting an obscenely high (rate) again today ...” and “Do you want us to keep the Libor higher?”

In its agreement with the CFTC, Lloyds agreed to establish controls and employee training “to ensure the integrity and reliability” of the reports submitted by the bank in the LIBOR-setting process.