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Four traders found guilty of rigging interbank lending rates intend to appeal against their convictions in the wake of Tom Hayes’ victory at the UK Supreme Court.
Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew and Philippe Moryoussef, who all worked at Barclays, and Christian Bittar, a former star trader at Deutsche Bank, will appeal against their convictions for rate-rigging, their law firm Hickman & Rose said on Thursday.
Hayes, a former trader at UBS and Citigroup, emerged victorious on Wednesday after a decade-long battle to clear his name for rigging Libor benchmark rates as the UK’s highest court overturned his conviction.
The Supreme Court also overturned the conviction of Carlo Palombo, a former Barclays trader, who was found guilty of manipulating Euribor, the euro equivalent to Libor.
“Following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision yesterday to quash the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, all four of our clients now intend to appeal against their convictions,” Hickman & Rose said in a statement on behalf of the other four traders.
All four currently have convictions for rigging Libor or Euribor. The now-defunct London Interbank Offered Rate was used to set the interest rate on loans and derivatives throughout the global financial system.
Banks around the world paid billions of dollars in regulatory fines as part of the scandal, which exploded in the wake of the financial crisis when public antipathy against financial services companies and traders was at its height.
Bittar pleaded guilty in a London court in 2018, while Moryoussef was convicted in absentia after refusing to attend court and leaving for France.
The Serious Fraud Office said on Wednesday in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that it had not deemed it in the public interest to initiate a retrial in the Hayes case. Hayes served half of an 11-year prison sentence.
It declined to comment on the four other traders’ intention to appeal.
