Bloomberg, Reuters and The Guardian quote Caroline Greenwell on the Supreme Court's decision to overturn City traders’ Libor-rigging convictions
min readTwo traders jailed for rigging benchmark interest rates have had their convictions overturned by the Supreme Court.
Tom Hayes was handed a 14-year jail sentence - cut to 11 years on appeal - in 2015, which was one of the toughest ever to be imposed for white-collar crime in UK history.
The former trader, along with Carlo Palombo, who was jailed for four years in 2019 over rigging the Euribor interest rates, took their cases to the country's highest court after the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeals last year.
The Supreme Court unanimously allowed Mr Hayes' appeal, overturning his 2015 conviction of eight counts of conspiracy to defraud by manipulating Libor, a now-defunct benchmark interest rate.
Caroline Greenwell, Partner, comments on the decision for The Guardian:
This is a landmark ruling, by which the Supreme Court has made it clear that considering commercial interests when submitting LIBOR rates isn’t automatically dishonest or criminal.
"The judgment brings the UK in line with the US courts, who in 2022 overturned convictions of traders on the basis that banks were permitted to factor in trading advantages when making LIBOR submissions, and confirms that the juries in Mr Hayes’ and Mr Palombo’s trials were unfairly directed by the judge that considering commercial interests in the submissions were prohibited.
"This result not only clears Mr Hayes’ and Mr Palombo’s names, but could also lead to convictions secured in nine other criminal trials prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office (who naturally opposed Hayes’ and Palombo’s appeals to the Supreme Court) being reviewed. Watch this space.
Read the full piece in The Guardian here.
