The City trader jailed for Libor rigging in 2015 has said he believes he was convicted during a “morality trial” of bankers’ conduct, as he concluded his fight to clear his name at the UK’s highest court.
Speaking after a three-day hearing at the supreme court in London on Thursday, Tom Hayes said his original conviction a decade ago was a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis and a jury guided by a “judge who had made his mind up about me”.
“Finally we had a fair tribunal that listened to the arguments. I hope they come up with a just decision,” the former UBS and Citigroup trader said.
Hayes, 45, served five-and-a-half years in prison for rigging Libor, a benchmark interest rate once used in the financial markets to underpin more than $350tn of loans and securities. The scandal led to fines of almost $10bn for a dozen banks and brokerages.
The court of appeal last year upheld the guilty verdict, saying there was “indisputable documentary evidence” that he had sought to move Libor and that he had made “frank admissions of dishonesty” – arguments repeated by the Serious Fraud Office during the latest hearing.
However, Hayes’s counsel, Adrian Darbishire KC, said there had been a “core error” underpinning the case that marked a “failure to respect the limits of the role of the judge in a jury trial”.
The judge’s original directions had “entered territory that has to be left to the jury”, Darbishire told a panel of five senior judges in London. “What happened in the Hayes case was not consistent with well-established principles of English law.”
The jury was 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, Hayes’s lawyers said.
The trader has also said he was prevented from submitting evidence of his daily profit and loss accounts in his original trial, which he says would have undermined the prosecution’s case that he profited personally.
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A ruling overturning his conviction could lead to several others being quashed in the UK.
