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Tom Hayes, the trader put prisoner for rates for Libor bench market rates, has taken his long-standing fight to erase his name at the highest court of the United Kingdom, with the argument that the original process that led to his conviction was “deadly compromised”.
Lawyers of the former UBS and Citigroup Trader try to convince a panel of five senior judges at the Supreme Court in London to destroy his conviction from 10 years ago. A three -day hearing started on Tuesday.
Hayes, 45, was the first person in the world who was found guilty by a jury on the Libor scandal and served five and a half years in prison.
The Court of Appeal last year held the guilty judgment of Hayes and said that there was “indisputable documentary evidence” that he had tried to move Libor and that he had made “frank admission of unfairness”.
Hayes was described by a researcher in the original case as the “Machiavelli” of Libor, a benchmark interest whose manipulation sent shock waves by financial markets and banks cost billions of pounds and settlements.
Libor, determined by daily entries from different “panelbanks”, was used for decades to support trillions of pounds and other loans and financial products around the world. It has been replaced since then. It was calculated an average rate by asking banks to submit their estimated loan costs to the interbancar market.
Hayes was one of the nine people who successfully continued through the Serious Fraud Office of the UK for rates for rigage.
In written arguments that were presented to the Supreme Court for the hearing this week, Adrian Darbishire KC, who represents Hayes, said that the instructions to the jury during the original process were “fundamentally wrong in the law. She diented the honesty of the process.”
Hayes fights the business alongside Carlo Palombo, a former Barclays trader who has been convicted in the same way for manipulating Euribor, another bench market rate, who has received a prison sentence of four years.
The Supreme Court case indicates two technical issues. First, or a matter of the law, a Libor rate that was submitted by a bank was inherent inherent “no real or honest answer” if it was “influenced by trade advantage”.
Secondly, whether the submission of a Libor rates should be the available “single cheapest rate” or whether it could be selected from various potential loan interest rates.
Hayes, nicknamed ‘Rain Man’, because he was obsessed with figures, was a star yen derivatives trader at UBS in Tokyo between 2006 and 2009. He claimed to have generated more than $ 280 million in profit for the bank.
Citigroup then poached him with a $ 4.2 million bonus, but fired him 10 months later when the Libor scandal held.
During the trial in 2015, officers of justice said that Hayes had detected as the leader in the manipulation of Yen Libor by asking tariff sets and traders at UBS-Een if at other banks and external brokers up the rate up or to go for ways that would benefit his trading positions.
Hayes said he had only tried to do as well as possible, and that his actions were known to his superiors.
The SFO, who received special government financing to bring its Libor prosecutions, said in a statement: “We will continue to support the Supreme Court as it should be.”