(March 27): Ex-UBS Group AG star trader, Tom Hayes, agreed to manipulate and rig Libor (London interbank offered rate) to dishonestly boost profits, prosecution lawyers said asking the UK’s top court to reject attempts to overturn his conviction.

The Supreme Court appeal over the conviction of Hayes and ex-Barclays plc trader Carlo Palombo for rigging Libor and Euribor (Euro interbank offered rate) will come to an end on Thursday. The judges will have to weigh whether the Britain’s first and most high profile criminal trial over rate rigging was unfair. 

Hayes sought to dishonestly increase profits “by agreeing to manipulate, move, influence or rig the published Libor rate,” James Eadie, the Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) lawyer, said in court filings. 

Lawyers for the traders have long argued their trials were tainted. The “core error, which has bedeviled” the case is a “marked failure to respect the limits of the role of the judge in a jury trial,” Adrian Darbishire, Hayes’ lawyer, argued earlier at the hearing.

A ruling overturning their convictions could lead to several others being quashed in the UK, vindicating years of effort to clear their names. The scandal — over fixing of benchmark rates that underpinned more than US$350 trillion of loans and securities — led to fines of almost US$10 billion (RM44.27 billion) for a dozen banks and brokerages.

The juries, which found Hayes and Palombo guilty in 2015 and 2019 respectively, were wrongly instructed by the trial judge that the rules for the rates setting process prohibited considering the bank’s commercial interest before making their submissions, their lawyers have argued. 

Hayes, who also worked at Citigroup Inc, was the “ringmaster” of a global network of 25 traders, prosecutors alleged at his trial. 

While more traders faced convictions in separate trials, none of those named in Hayes indictment were convicted. “He’s the only person convicted of these serious conspiracies,’ Hayes’ lawyer Darbishire said during the hearing. 

Taking their trading advantage into account conflicts with the central purpose of the rate setting exercise and it would “cut across the fundamental nature of what is sought to be done in the process,” SFO’s lawyer Eadie countered on Thursday.

Hayes was sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Palombo was sentenced to four years. Hayes was released from prison in 2021 after serving half his sentence and continued the legal fight to prove his innocence.

He suffered “immense harm” because of the unfair trial and his conduct is not considered criminal outside the UK, his lawyer Karen Todner said earlier this week. “We very much hope the Supreme Court will correct this historic wrong.”

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