London (AFP) – The Court of Appeal in London on Wednesday quashed the criminal convictions of five former financial traders for manipulating the Libor and Euribor interest rate benchmarks, the latest twist in the long-running rigging scandal. The decision to overturn the convictions of the five, who all worked at Barclays, follows a landmark 2025 ruling by the UK Supreme Court that quashed two other ex-traders’ convictions.
“There is a directly applicable decision of the Supreme Court, which in substance, in our judgment, determines these appeals,” judge Andrew Edis said as he detailed the appeal court decision. Manipulation of the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor) and its euro equivalent Euribor occurred in the run-up to and following the 2008 global financial crisis. The international scandal it created led to prison sentences and massive fines for major banks.
Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon, and Colin Bermingham all saw their convictions overturned on Wednesday. Ahead of the court formally revealing its decision Wednesday afternoon, publicists representing lawyers for the five provided their reactions welcoming the ruling.
“For the last 10 years, the stain of a criminal conviction has been a burden I have carried every minute of every day,” said Mathew, 45, who was convicted of conspiracy to defraud in 2016. He was found guilty alongside Pabon and Merchant, who were Libor traders based in New York, with their prison sentences ranging from two to six and-a-half years. “Having this conviction quashed is not simply about correcting the record, it’s about finally having validation that this is an injustice that never should have happened,” added Mathew, who was a junior trader based in London.
Moryoussef was a London-based senior trader convicted of conspiracy to defraud in 2018 and sentenced to eight years in prison. Bermingham — also London-based — was convicted in 2019 and given a five-year sentence. “For more than eight years, I have lived under the shadow of a conviction for something I did not do,” 58-year-old Moryoussef said in the statement. “I have lost my work, my career, my reputation and my income … today, I am regaining my soul, and for the first time, I can envision my next chapter in peace.”
Wednesday’s decision follows Britain’s highest court overturning the convictions of Tom Hayes, a former Citigroup and UBS trader, and another ex-trader at Barclays, Carlo Palombo, in July 2025. The Supreme Court ruled that errors in the way the jury had been directed rendered the convictions “unsafe,” prompting the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to determine that this also impacted the cases of the five others. The SFO did not oppose the appeals of the five individuals.
Jason Williams, its head of division, said in a statement it had reached that determination after “carefully considering” the Supreme Court’s 2025 judgment and “the full circumstances” of the case. “We communicated our decision last year to each of the people affected by the judgment,” he added. The Libor was long a benchmark inter-bank rate in the financial world, impacting an enormous range of financial products in Britain and beyond, before being abolished at the end of 2024 following numerous scandals.
© 2024 AFP
