Ex-Deutsche Bank top trader's rate-rigging conviction quashed

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 conspiring to manipulate 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, bringing to six the number of SFO rate-rigging convictions overturned this week ‌alone because of legal errors. Judges will publish their written reasons later. "I have waited a very, very long time for this day," Bittar said ‌in a statement. "Finally, the injustice of what I and others suffered has been recognised. I am so grateful for those who stood by me through this ordeal and those who worked so tirelessly to correct it."

Jason Williams, the head of division at the SFO, said the investigator and prosecutor had argued for a different outcome but respected the court's decision. "The SFO remains ⁠committed to ​tackling the most complex fraud, bribery and ⁠corruption," he added.

BARCLAYS FIVE SEE CONVICTIONS QUASHED 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.

Bittar, ⁠who earned tens of millions of pounds at Deutsche Bank, 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. But his lawyer, Adrian Darbishire, argued that his client's guilty plea was founded on fundamental errors of law, ⁠because prosecutors had not been required to prove a factual element of the charge against him - that he had agreed to the submission of "false or misleading" Euribor rates.

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 people. 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 of those 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.