Review: Tom Hayes was convicted in 2015 for rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate
The conviction of Tom Hayes, the first trader jailed for fixing the Libor rate, was ‘extraordinarily unfair’ and should be overturned, the Court of Appeal has heard.
Hayes, a former Citigroup and UBS trader, was convicted in 2015 for rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) that tracks what banks pay to borrow cash from each other.
He was among 38 traders prosecuted for manipulating the Libor and Euribor benchmarks.
His appeal is being heard alongside ex-Barclays trader Carlo Palombo, who was sentenced to four years for manipulating Euribor.
Hayes served half his 11-year sentence and last year won a review.
His lawyer Adrian Darbishire KC argued the conviction was ‘unsafe’, and directions to the jury about Libor were ‘not only wrong in law’ but ‘extraordinarily unfair’.
The Libor scandal led to banks paying big fines. Traders like Hayes argue they were scapegoated.
