The first trader to be jailed worldwide for Libor manipulation has been left with a possible route to clear his name, despite being refused permission to appeal against his conviction to the UK Supreme Court.
Tom Hayes, a former star trader at Citigroup and UBS, was convicted in 2015 of conspiracy to defraud by manipulating Libor, a benchmark rate once used to price trillions of pounds of financial products globally.
He appealed his conviction earlier this year along with Carlo Palombo, a former Barclays trader convicted in 2019 of biasing Libor's euro equivalent, Euribor.
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal refused to give Hayes and Palombo permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, although it did confirm that the case raised a “question of law of general public importance”.
This means Hayes and Palombo can directly ask the Supreme Court for permission to appeal.
Following the announcement, Hayes said: “I am delighted that, at the fifth attempt, the court has finally and correctly certified this as a matter of law of public importance.
He added that rate traders “have long insisted that presenting numerically true values was truthful, genuine and honest.
“Now the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to decide whether the presence of commercial considerations made those truthful rates criminal.
“It is time for the UK legal system to come into line with the rest of the world and for these miscarriages of justice to be corrected.”
In a ruling in March, three judges dismissed the appeals and Lord Justice Bean concluded that jurors were not misdirected in Hayes' case.
And at a brief hearing on Tuesday, the same judge, sitting alongside Mr Justice Popplewell and Mr Justice Bryan, denied them both permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
However, the three judges ruled that the case involves a “question of law of general public importance”, keeping open the possibility of a challenge to the UK's highest court.
Lord Justice Bean said: “It is for the Supreme Court to decide whether the question of law is one which it must consider in light of the consistent series of decisions of the Court of Appeal.”
The Libor rate was previously used as a benchmark around the world to set up financial deals worth trillions of pounds, including car loans and mortgages.
It was an average interest rate calculated from figures presented by a panel of leading banks in London, each reporting what it would be charged if it borrowed from other institutions.
Hayes, who has maintained his innocence, spent five and a half years in prison and was released in January 2021. Palombo was sentenced to four years in prison.
Additional agency reports
