Tom Hayes Gets UK Top Court Appeal Over Libor Conviction

This content was published on July 25, 2024 - 15:37

2 minutes

(Bloomberg) — Tom Hayes, the former star trader who became the face of the Libor scandal, was granted permission by the UK’s highest court to appeal his near decade-old criminal conviction.

Hayes and ex-Barclays Plc trader Carlo Palombo will get a hearing at the UK Supreme Court, their spokespeople said Thursday. A panel of judges refused to refer the appeal to the top court themselves in May, but said the pair could ask for permission directly but said there were issues of law that had public importance involved in the case.

The chance to bring his case to Supreme Court judges comes after the Court of Appeal ruled in March that the ex-UBS Group AG and Citigroup Inc. trader’s conviction over interest rate-rigging should stand as there was clear evidence that he deliberately manipulated the London interbank offered rate.

Ever since he was released from prison in 2021, Hayes has consistently fought the notion that what he did was a criminal offense.

Lawyers for the men argued that the UK is now the only place where the rate-rigging is considered a crime after a US court decision that overturned the convictions of two Deutsche Bank AG traders.

“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 traders for the submission of numerically-true interest rates to a survey conducted by a trade association,” Hayes said in a statement.

A spokesperson from the Supreme Court confirmed that permission to appeal has been granted and said the case will be listed at a later date.

(Updates with a comment from the Supreme Court in the final paragraph)