Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
A British court on Wednesday quashed the convictions of five traders accused of manipulating benchmark interest rates in one of the biggest banking scandals linked to the 2008 global financial crisis. The Court of Appeal set aside the fraud convictions of former Barclays employees Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Philippe Moryoussef and Colin Bermingham.
The ruling followed a UK Supreme Court decision in July 2025 that quashed the convictions of two other traders, Tom Hayes, a former Citigroup and UBS trader, and Carlo Palombo, who worked for Barclays. The Supreme Court had ruled that those convictions were unfair because judges in the separate cases gave inaccurate instructions to jurors.
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The five traders whose convictions were overturned on Wednesday had been sentenced between 2016 and 2019 for offences linked to influencing the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate, or Libor, and its euro equivalent, Euribor. These benchmark rates were used to set interest rates on trillions of dollars of financial products around the world.
Lawyers for the five argued that juries in their cases had received almost identical instructions and therefore “their trials were unfair and their convictions are unsafe”. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office said it would not seek retrials for Hayes and Palombo and did not oppose the appeals of the five other defendants.
Libor and Euribor were once key benchmarks used to set interest rates on products ranging from business loans to home mortgages and credit card debt. They were based on figures submitted each day by major international banks, showing the rate at which they could borrow money from other banks. During the financial crisis, regulators found that some banks were making artificially low Libor submissions to appear more creditworthy, or submitting false numbers to secure a rate that suited them better.
The Serious Fraud Office began investigating alleged attempts to manipulate Libor in 2012, leading to the conviction of nine bankers and the acquittal of 11 others. The rates have since been phased out in recent years, partly because they were seen as worsening the financial crisis, and Wednesday’s ruling marks the latest development in the long-running case.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
