Following a ten-year battle, two former City traders, who were at the heart of one of the most significant scandals of the financial crisis, have been released from prison.
Trials found that Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo were guilty of manipulating the interest rates used for loans between banks।
They were among 19 city traders who were sentenced to jail in the United States and the United Kingdom for cheating on the interest rates known as Libor and Euribor, which are used to determine borrowing costs for commercial loans and mortgages।
The case brought by the Serious Fraud Office refused to seek a retrial
The Supreme Court decided on Wednesday that Mr. Hayes and Mr. Palombo’s trials were unfair and overturned their convictions।
Mr. Hayes, speaking outside court, said it felt “surreal” to be cleared after “fighting for 10 years” to get his name cleared। “It’s been a long time coming, today we are vindicated, and today is a happy day
The decision serves as a vindication for the traders who have been claiming for ten years that they were victims of a number of unfair acts।
They claimed that in order to calm the public’s anger against the banks due to the financial crisis, they were wrongly prosecuted for what was normal business practice
Between 2015 and 2019, Mr. Hayes and Mr. Palombo were among a group of traders and brokers who were subjected to nine criminal trials in London and New York for rigging interest rates
The first banker imprisoned for the 2015 affair was Mr. Hayes, a former trader at Swiss firm UBS. He served five and a half years of his sentence after his initial 15-year sentence was successfully lowered to 11 years on appeal.
In January 2021, he became free. In 2019, Mr. Palombo received a four-year prison sentence. In 2021, he was also freed.
The UK is the only nation in the world where the charges against traders are criminalized, after US courts declared in 2022 that there was no proof they had violated any laws or regulations and overturned all American convictions.
Between 2015 and 2019, the Court of Appeal in the United Kingdom prevented the traders’ cases from making it all the way to the Supreme Court five times.
What was Libor?
The London interbank lending rate, or Libor, was a crucial interest rate that determined borrowing costs for financial transactions worth trillions of dollars. It was the subject of accusations of misconduct after the 2008 financial crisis. Libor was phased out after 2021 after dozens of City traders were accused of attempting to influence the level at which it was set in order to benefit the banks they worked for.
