Five former Barclays traders, jailed in Britain for plotting to rig global benchmark interest rates, have won an appeal to clear their names, further unravelling some of the UK Serious Fraud Office's most high-profile prosecutions. London's Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of Philippe Moryoussef, Jay Merchant, Colin Bermingham, Jonathan Mathew and Alex Pabon on Wednesday, with judges due to lay out their reasons later that day.
The traders were cast by prosecutors as a symbol of banker greed at a time of taxpayer fury over eye-watering bank bailouts following the 2007-09 credit crisis. They were sentenced to between 33 months and eight years in jail between 2016 and 2019 after a series of landmark SFO trials over the rigging of the now-defunct interbank interest rate Libor and its euro equivalent, Euribor.
The men applied to clear their names after the Supreme Court last year overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes - the former star UBS and Citigroup trader - and ex-Barclays peer Carlo Palombo. The Supreme Court ruled that trial judges had misdirected juries and that legal errors undermined the fairness of the trials, laying the groundwork for the Court of Appeal decision. The SFO said it would not seek retrials or oppose the appeals.
"It's hard to take in," said a tearful Bermingham, 70, outside the courtroom. "You don't believe it until you hear it." Moryoussef, now 58, gained notoriety for jumping bail and fleeing to his native France; he was tried in London in his absence, sentenced to eight years, and has remained a fugitive since. "Today, I am regaining my soul, and for the first time, I can envision my next chapter in peace," he said in a statement.
The ruling represents a humiliating chapter for the SFO, whose rate-rigging prosecutions were once hailed as a landmark effort to hold bankers accountable after the financial crisis. Instead, the convictions have collapsed one by one on legal technicalities around jury directions. Libor and Euribor once governed trillions of dollars in global financial products before market reforms phased them out. For the five men, the decision restores their names after years in which they were held up as the face of City excess - though critics note that the quashing turned on legal procedure rather than a finding that no manipulation occurred.
The collapse of the rate-rigging convictions has prompted difficult questions about the SFO's judgment in pursuing the cases. The agency spent years and millions of pounds on investigations that were presented as a reckoning for the City after the financial crisis, only to see the convictions unravel on points of law. Defenders of the prosecutions argue the conduct was real and the legal errors technical; critics say the SFO overreached in trying to criminalise behaviour that was, at the time, widespread market practice.