Hayes vows to fight on to clear his name

As Court of Appeal upholds Libor rigging conviction . . .

CONVICTED Libor trader Tom Hayes has vowed to fight on to clear his name after losing his appeal against conviction. Hayes, who was jailed in 2015 for manipulating benchmark lending rate Libor, will now seek to take his case to the Supreme Court.

The former Citigroup and UBS trader claims he was made a scapegoat for the financial crisis.

After yesterday’s judgment at the Court of Appeal, he said: ‘I’m a fighter not a quitter.’

His supporters include the Tory MP David Davis ( picturedbelow), who said the case was a ‘continuing miscarriage of justice’.

Hayes said he still wanted ‘the opportunity to be exonerated and move on with my life’. He added: ‘It would be the ability for my son to have a father who no longer had a criminal conviction. I haven’t fought all of these years for nothing.’

And he called the approach of the courts – compared with other countries – an ‘Alice in Wonderland situation’.

His latest appeal – and that of former Barclays trader Carlo Palombo – was brought after a landmark case in the US in which the convictions of two former Deutsche Bank traders were overturned.

The case was heard by Lord Justice Bean and two other senior judges.

Hayes occasionally shook his head and later placed his head in his hands as Bean read out the judgment, following a hearing this month.

The judge said the US case ‘is not and could not be’ relevant when considering the issues.

He rejected a further claim that the jury was misdirected by the trial judge.

Bean said ‘indisputable documentary evidence’ showed Hayes was attempting to move the Libor rate ‘ accompanied by attempts to maintain secrecy’ while he had made ‘frank admissions of dishonesty’.

‘ Both carried the clear implication that he knew what he was doing was not permitted by Libor,’ the judge said.

Hayes’ case centres on the London interbank offered rate ( Libor), which was once used to price trillions of dollars’ worth of financial trades globally. The rate, which has since been scrapped, was calculated using submissions from traders on the rate at which banks would lend to each other.

Hayes and Palombo were accused of dishonestly conspiring with others to manipulate the rate to benefit their banks’ trading positions. Hayes was jailed for 14 years in 2015, later reduced to 11 on appeal, and served half his sentence. Palombo was jailed for four years. They were among nine convicted in the UK. Outside court, Hayes said the judgment was a shock. ‘We really believed and hoped that the decision would be different,’ he said. ‘I felt we made very strong arguments.

‘It’s not consistent with French laws, German laws, American laws, we’re in a very sort of Alice in Wonderland situation here.’

He said that even if the judges do not allow the case to progress to the Supreme Court, he could pursue it in Europe, adding: ‘We haven’t given up.

‘The idea that you can be sitting in America and do something that would be deemed criminal in the UK is crazy.’

He said of his initial sentence: ‘I was definitely a scapegoat and given a sentence which destroyed my life in pretty much every regard.’ Davis, a Tory former Cabinet minister, said there was a ‘spectacular difference of law’ on the treatment of Libor between Britain, and America and Europe, which ‘needs to be resolved at the highest level, namely at the Supreme Court’.

He added: ‘I think the US court understands this market better than the British judges. I’m afraid I think it’s a continuing miscarriage of justice.’

The Serious Fraud Office said: ‘The judgment is clear that these convictions for fraud are still as relevant today as ten years ago.

‘No one is above the law and the court has recognised that these convictions stand firm.’

Hayes and Palombo have 14 days to apply for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

‘I’m a fighter not a quitter’