Court dismisses traders’ appeal to overturn convictions for rate rigging

LONDON — Britain's Court of Appeal on Wednesday dismissed an attempt by two former traders to overturn their convictions for interest rate rigging in the lead up to the global financial crisis in 2008.

Tom Hayes, a former Libor trader at Swiss bank UBS, was originally sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2015 for conspiracy to defraud, serving five, while Carlo Palombo, previously a Euribor trader at Barclays, was sentenced to four years in 2019, serving two.

Both were hoping to clear their names after a U.S. appeals court threw out a related case in January 2022 and the U.K.'s Criminal Cases Review Commission, which probes potential miscarriages of justice, last year determined they were able to appeal.

The two men are now expected to take their cases to the U.K. Supreme Court.

The state's pursuit of Libor traders from 2012 took place amid substantial public anger toward banks and bankers for the role they played in the 2008 crisis, which hit economies around the world.

Until then, Libor was a little-known process that bankers used to help set the price at which banks and other institutions would lend to each other. It became a central point of focus in the blame game for what went wrong.

The rate depended on daily submissions from low-ranking bankers to form a consensus on the cost of funding on any given day.

Euribor was the equivalent process for determining the cost of euro funds.

In total, eight bankers served jail time in the U.K. after being found guilty of “deliberately disregarding the proper basis for submitting Libor.”

Hayes got the longest sentence, becoming the most high-profile face of the scandal.