Tom Hayes, the former UBS Group trader convicted in the U.K. over the Libor-rigging scandal, had a criminal indictment against him dismissed by a New York judge.
U.S. prosecutors asked the judge to throw out the case against Hayes saying there was no provable case after an appellate court overturned the convictions of two Deutsche Bank traders over interest rate fixing, according to a
Hayes served about half of his 11 year jail
The U.K.'s Criminal Cases Review Commission provisionally said it wouldn't refer his case to the Court of Appeal but is expected to give its final decision soon, Hayes's spokespeople said.
The rigging of Libor and another rate, Euribor, by traders seeking to bolster their positions were among the most high-profile crimes prosecuted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. By 2017, a dozen banks had paid penalties approaching $10 billion for rigging the benchmarks, which are tied to trillions of dollars worth of loans and derivatives.
"At last, after ten years the threat of extradition to the USA for doing my job legitimately as a trader has been lifted," Hayes said in a statement Monday. "It is now time for the U.K. to examine the convictions of all traders. The U.K. is now the sole jurisdiction that deems our conduct to have been criminal."
The SFO closed its seven-year rate-rigging investigation in 2019 after securing three guilty verdicts and a guilty plea against bankers at Barclays. The prosecutor's results were mixed, however, with eight people acquitted in various Libor-related cases. Only a handful of other bank employees have faced criminal charges globally and several of Hayes's alleged co-conspirators were acquitted.
