A New York court has dismissed criminal charges against Tom Hayes, a former UBS UK trader and Citigroup who served five and a half years in a British prison for rigging the Libor lending benchmark.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has filed a motion to dismiss the case against Hayes and another ex UBS trader Roger Darin.
This comes after a US appeals court overturned the convictions of two former Deutsche Bank traders, Matthew Connolly and Gavin Black, in January. Overturning those convictions “implicates the theory charged in this case and the government’s ability to prove this case,” the motion said.
Hayes was the first person convicted by a jury for participating in a conspiracy to defraud by fixing the Libor rate in August 2015 and one of nine resulting prison terms. He was released from HMP Fordon the south coast of England, in January 2021.
The Libar The forgery scandal emerged after the global financial crisis of 2008, further tarnishing the city’s reputation after a huge government bailout for creditors.
Banks used Libor, the London interbank rate, to set the cost of borrowing on contracts with a notional value of hundreds of trillions of pounds.
Regulators found evidence that traders on the committee that sets the rate each day fixed it for their own benefit. Banks paid fines of hundreds of millions of pounds.
During the trial, Hayes was described as the mastermind of the bid-rigging conspiracy. However, his lawyer argued that there were people more senior to him who knew about the activities and that he was a “scapegoat” by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office as it tried to find those responsible for the scandal.
Hayes has always maintained his innocence and fought to have it overturned, most recently through the UK’s Criminal Justice Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.
His spokesman said on Monday that the CCRC “has made an interim decision not to refer his case, but has agreed to hear further submissions from his legal team before making a final decision”. The final decision was called “inevitable”.
In written comments, Hayes urged the CCRC to send his case back to the appeals court.
Hayes said that the dismissal of the charges means that the US Department of Justice “openly acknowledges the flawed legal theory being pursued in cases of so-called Libor rigging.”
He said: “Finally, after 10 years, the threat of extradition to the US for doing my job legally as a trader has been lifted. It is time for the UK to test the beliefs of all traders. The UK is now the only jurisdiction that considers our behavior to be criminal.’
Hayes said the UK’s legal position was “demographically absurd”.
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