Five financial traders could have their convictions for manipulating the Libor interest rate benchmarks overturned following a landmark UK Supreme Court ruling, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said Friday.
Britain鈥檚 highest court in July quashed the convictions of former traders Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, ruling that errors in the way the jury had been directed rendered the convictions 鈥榰nsafe鈥�.
鈥楾he jury directions... which were the basis of the court鈥檚 judgment, may apply to Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Philippe Moryoussef and Colin Bermingham鈥檚 trials,鈥� the SFO said on its website.
鈥楾herefore, their convictions may be considered unsafe,鈥� it added.
Manipulation of the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor) and its euro equivalent Euribor occurred in the run-up to and following the 2008 global financial crisis.
The international scandal it created led to prison sentences and massive fines for major banks.
鈥榃e have already lodged applications... to have their cases referred back to the Court of Appeal,鈥� Ben Rose of law firm Hickman and Rose, which represents three of the cases, said in a statement sent to AFP.
However, the SFO considered the conviction of another former trader, Peter Johnson, who had pleaded guilty, 鈥榯o be sound鈥�.
The Libor was long a benchmark inter-bank rate in the financial world, impacting an enormous range of financial products in Britain and beyond, before being abolished at the end of last year following numerous scandals.
In a landmark case last month, the Supreme Court quashed the conviction of Hayes, a former Citigroup and UBS trader, who had been found guilty of multiple counts of conspiracy to defraud Libor between 2006 and 2010.
He spent five-and-a-half years in prison before his release in January 2021.
The Supreme Court noted that there was 鈥榓mple evidence鈥� against Hayes which could have led a jury to find him guilty 鈥榠f properly directed鈥�.
The SFO, which brought the original case against Hayes and Palombo, said it would not seek a retrial.
