UK Court of Appeal quashes Libor fraud convictions of five ex-Barclays traders

A British court on Wednesday quashed the fraud convictions of five former Barclays employees accused of manipulating benchmark interest rates, in one of the biggest banking scandals to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis. The Court of Appeal threw out the convictions of Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Philippe Moryoussef and Colin Bermingham. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]

The five were sentenced between 2016 and 2019 for offences connected to influencing the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate, or Libor, and its euro currency equivalent, Euribor. UPI reported that Mathew, Merchant, Pabon and Moryoussef were convicted of conspiracy to defraud over their roles in helping to manipulate Libor, while Bermingham was convicted of a single count of conspiracy to defraud in his role supervising Barclays' daily submissions for Euribor. The UPI report said all five had long since served out their sentences. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]

Libor and Euribor were critical benchmarks once used to set interest rates on everything from business loans to home mortgages and credit card debt, the Associated Press reported, adding that they were based on figures submitted daily by major international banks reporting the rate at which they could borrow from other banks. During the financial crisis, regulators became aware that some banks were making artificially low Libor submissions to appear more creditworthy, or submitting fake numbers to reach a rate that suited them. The Serious Fraud Office began investigating alleged Libor manipulation in 2012, which ultimately led to the conviction of nine bankers, according to the AP and the Seattle Times. [ 2 , 3 ]

The appeals followed a July 2025 ruling in which the UK Supreme Court quashed the convictions of two other traders, Tom Hayes, a former Citigroup and UBS trader, and Carlo Palombo, who worked for Barclays. The court ruled that their convictions were unfair because judges in their separate cases gave inaccurate instructions to jurors. UPI reported that the Court of Appeal had upheld the Hayes and Palombo convictions in 2024, prompting the pair to take the case to the Supreme Court. [ 2 , 3 ]

Lawyers for the five argued that juries in their cases received almost identical instructions and therefore, the Associated Press reported, “their trials were unfair and their convictions are unsafe.” UPI reported that the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the five cases back to the courts in January after determining “there was no distinguishing factor between these cases and the cases of Mr. Hayes and Mr. Palombo,” and said repeated jury misdirection and legal errors undermined the safety of the convictions. The commission said the Serious Fraud Office, which prosecuted the rate-rigging cases, conceded in January that the convictions of the five “may be” unsafe. The AP and the Seattle Times reported that the Serious Fraud Office did not oppose the five defendants' appeals and would not seek retrials for Hayes and Palombo. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]