London court quashes rate-rigging conviction of ex-Deutsche Bank trader Bittar

Christian Bittar, a former star Deutsche Bank trader jailed in Britain for conspiring to rig benchmark interest rates, won an appeal to clear his name ‌on Friday in a fresh blow to the Serious Fraud Office prosecutor. Bittar was sentenced to five years and four months after pleading guilty in 2018 to rigging Euribor, the Euro interbank offered rate, which helps determine rates on trillions ‌of dollars of financial contracts and loans worldwide.

But London's Court of Appeal on Friday quashed the conviction, saying ‌it would publish its written reasons later. "We argued for a different outcome but respect the court's decision in relation to Christian Bittar," said Jason Williams, the head of division at the SFO.

"The SFO remains committed to tackling the most complex fraud, bribery and corruption." Bittar's ⁠appeal was ​heard after senior judges ⁠on Wednesday overturned the convictions of five former Barclays traders, further unspooling some of the SFO's most high-profile prosecutions.

He is the first person convicted ⁠of either manipulating Euribor or Libor, its now-defunct London counterpart, to have seen his conviction overturned following a guilty plea. The derivatives ​traders were cast by prosecutors as a symbol of banker greed at a time of taxpayer fury ⁠at eye-watering bank bailouts following the 2007-2009 credit crisis, which sent stock markets plunging and pitched economies into recession.

Launching a criminal investigation in ⁠2012, ​the SFO prosecuted 20 and seven were convicted at trial, two pleaded guilty and 11 were acquitted during a series of tricky London rate-rigging trials and re-trials between 2015 and 2019. Eight rate-rigging convictions have now been ⁠overturned after the Supreme Court last year ruled that legal errors had undermined the fairness of the first Libor ⁠trial - that of former UBS ⁠and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes and a later trial of former Barclays peer, Carlo Palombo.

Those errors, which centred on how judges directed the juries, also tarnished later rate-rigging ‌trials, the Court ‌of Appeal ruled on Wednesday.