Five former Barclays traders who were 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. The five men, a Frenchman, a Calcutta-born trader, two Britons and an American, were imprisoned in 2016 after being cast by prosecutors as symbols of banker greed. Their appeal follows the Supreme Court's landmark decision last year to overturn the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, which opened the floodgates for the remaining defendants in the rate-rigging saga.
London's Court of Appeal on Wednesday quashed the convictions of Philippe Moryoussef, Jay Merchant, Colin Bermingham, Jonathan Mathew and Alex Pabon, who had been imprisoned in 2016 for manipulating the now-defunct Libor rate and its euro equivalent, Euribor. The men were cast by prosecutors as symbols of banker greed at a time of taxpayer fury over eye-watering bank bailouts following the 2007-2009 credit crisis.
The traders 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 colleague Carlo Palombo for rigging Libor and Euribor. That ruling opened the door to a series of appeals by others convicted in the same wave of prosecutions.
The Libor scandal was one of the defining financial scandals of the post-crisis era. Banks including Barclays were found to have manipulated the interbank lending rates that underpinned trillions of dollars of financial contracts worldwide, leading to billions in fines across the industry. The SFO's criminal prosecutions were presented as a demonstration that individuals, not just institutions, would be held to account.
A decade on, that legacy is being dismantled in the courts. With the latest quashings, a significant portion of the SFO's flagship rate-rigging convictions have now been overturned, raising questions about the legal basis on which the original cases were brought.
Lawyers for the traders welcomed the ruling, arguing that the men had been scapegoated for practices that were widespread across the banking industry at the time. The SFO has not said whether it will seek to appeal further or to review any remaining cases in the pipeline.
The episode marks a humiliating reversal for an agency that staked its reputation on securing criminal convictions in the wake of the financial crisis. For the five men, the quashing of their convictions closes a chapter that cost them their liberty, their careers and, in some cases, their health. The broader debate over whether the Libor prosecutions delivered justice, or simply found convenient targets, will continue.