Five former bankers convicted of manipulating interest rates have been given a fresh opportunity to clear their names, after the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred their cases to the Court of Appeal. The move follows the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn the convictions of traders Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo.
The CCRC announced on Thursday that it had referred the cases of Alex Pabon, Jay Vijay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef and Colin Bermingham. The men were convicted between 2016 and 2019 for rigging the euro interbank offered rate (Euribor) or the London interbank offered rate (Libor), and received prison sentences ranging from two to eight years.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which brought the original charges, acknowledged that the convictions “may be considered unsafe” after the Supreme Court found faults in Hayes’s trial, including “inaccurate and unfair” instructions to the jury. The CCRC concluded there was “no distinguishing factor” between these five cases and those of Hayes and Palombo, and that “jury misdirection and legal errors have undermined the safety of all the convictions”.
The referrals mean the Court of Appeal will now decide whether the convictions are unsafe. The five men join a growing list of bankers seeking to overturn convictions related to the Libor and Euribor scandals, which affected the value of pensions, mortgages and savings worldwide.
