Supreme Court to hear cases of traders jailed over rate-rigging

Two former financial market traders jailed over interest rate benchmark manipulation will take bids to clear their names to the UK’s highest court.

Tom Hayes, 44, a former Citigroup and UBS trader, was found guilty of multiple counts of conspiracy to defraud over manipulating the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor) between 2006 and 2010.

His case, alongside that of another jailed trader, Carlo Palombo, 45, was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice.

In a ruling in March, three judges dismissed the appeals, finding that jurors were not misdirected in Hayes’ case.

The Serious Fraud Office opposed the appeals.

Lord Justice Bean, who heard the challenges alongside Lord Justice Popplewell and Mr Justice Bryan, later refused the two permission to appeal at the Supreme Court but did say the cases involve a “point of law of general public importance”.

On Thursday, a Supreme Court spokeswoman confirmed that permission to appeal had been granted and that the case would be listed in due course.

Following the announcement, Hayes said: “I’m ecstatic. At the fifth attempt, the Supreme Court finally has the chance to address the aberration of the case in law that was used to imprison Ibor traders for the submission of numerically true interest rates to a survey conducted by a trade association.

“The Ibor traders have long insisted that submitting numerically truthful values was genuine and honest.

“Now the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to decide if the presence of commercial consideration made those truthful rates criminal.

“It’s time for the UK legal system to now align with the rest of the world and for these miscarriages of justice to be corrected.”

The two men’s lawyers claim the UK was the only country where their conduct was considered a crime.

Palombo said: “I am delighted and relieved that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear our case, and I hope that the wrong that we have both experienced will finally be put right.”

Karen Todner, Hayes’s solicitor, said the Supreme Court case was “a chance for this dreadful miscarriage of justice to be overturned”.

The point of law in the cases centres around the “proper construction” of the Libor and Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) definitions, with a Supreme Court order saying it “will need to be addressed on the scope of the appeal”.

The Libor rate was previously used as a reference point around the world for setting millions of pounds worth of financial deals, including car loans and mortgages.

It was an interest rate average calculated from figures submitted by a panel of leading banks in London, with each one reporting what it would be charged were it to borrow from other institutions.

Hayes, who has maintained his innocence, spent five and a half years in prison and was released in January 2021.

Palombo, an ex-vice president of euro rates at Barclays bank, was found guilty of conspiring with others to submit false or misleading Euribor submissions between 2005 and 2009.

He had denied acted dishonestly but was jailed for four years in April 2019 after a retrial.

Both men had lost previous Court of Appeal challenges against their convictions before the CCRC reference.