Tom Hayes Denied Supreme Court Appeal, But Finds Hope

Tom Hayes, the first trader jailed for interest rate rigging, was denied permission to appeal his conviction at the UK's Supreme Court. However, a potential route remains open for Hayes and co-appellant Carlo Palombo to clear their names, as the Court of Appeal highlighted a key legal point for Supreme Court consideration.

Tom Hayes, the first trader jailed worldwide for interest rate rigging, was on Tuesday refused permission to appeal against his conviction at the United Kingdom's Supreme Court, but was nonetheless given a potential route to clear his name. Hayes, a former star Citigroup and UBS trader, was convicted in 2015 of conspiracy to defraud by manipulating Libor, a benchmark rate once used to price trillions of financial products globally.

He appealed against his conviction earlier this year alongside Carlo Palombo, a former Barclays trader convicted in 2019 of skewing Libor's euro equivalent, Euribor. The Court of Appeal in London dismissed their appeals in March, ruling that it was illegal to take commercial interests into account when setting Libor or Euribor rates.

After that ruling, Hayes and Palombo asked the Court of Appeal to rule that their cases raised a "point of law of general public importance", a requirement for being able to appeal to the Supreme Court. Judge David Bean said that whether a submitted Libor or Euribor rate was "not a genuine or honest answer" if it was influenced by a trader or their employer's trading advantage did raise a point which could be considered by the Supreme Court.

However, Hayes and Palombo were refused permission to appeal, meaning it will be for the Supreme Court to decide whether to hear their appeals. Hayes said he was "delighted" with the decision, saying in a statement that traders "have long insisted that submitting numerically truthful values was truthful, genuine and honest".

"Now the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to decide if the presence of commercial consideration made those truthful rates criminal," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)