Convicted ex-Barclays Euribor trader gets fresh shot at appeal

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A former Barclays trader found guilty of manipulating a key interest rate benchmark has been given another chance to appeal against his conviction following a review by the body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission has referred Carlo Palombo’s case to the Court of Appeal in London, his lawyer said on Thursday, making him the second former trader to be given a fresh shot at an appeal this year.

The referral comes after the CCRC sent the case of Tom Hayes, a former trader at UBS and Citigroup who was jailed for conspiring to rig the Libor benchmark rate, back to the appeals court in July. Hayes served five and a half years in prison and was released in 2021.

Palombo was found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison in 2019 for rigging Euribor — the euro version of the now-retired London interbank offered rate — a key benchmark used to indicate borrowing costs between banks. He was one of a number of defendants prosecuted in the high-profile banking scandal that saw banks pay out billions of dollars in fines.

The CCRC referrals come after a New York court overturned the convictions of two former Deutsche Bank traders charged in connection with Libor in January last year, and dropped criminal charges against Hayes in October 2022.

A three-judge panel ruled in the case of Matthew Connolly and Gavin Black that the government had failed to show “any of the trader-influenced submissions were false, fraudulent, or misleading”. US prosecutors said the ruling brought into question their ability to secure a conviction against Hayes. Charges against another former trader, Roger Darin, were also dismissed.

These developments left the UK as the only country to have convicted traders over rate manipulation.

“Earlier this year we concluded that there was a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would overturn the conviction of Tom Hayes in light of the legal approach to the definition and operation of the Libor rules taken by the US,” CCRC chair Helen Pitcher said in a statement.

“The CCRC recognised that Mr Palombo’s case was not dissimilar to Mr Hayes’ case.”

In a statement on Thursday, Palombo said: “I went to prison for conduct that nobody at the time thought was prohibited, let alone criminal; which was normal business practice and directed by my bosses; and which the people who created Euribor said was permitted.

“Had I done what I did anywhere in the world other than the UK, I would never have been convicted.”

Palombo’s lawyer Ben Rose said the similarities between Palombo and Hayes’s cases were “so strong that we hope that the Court of Appeal will consider both cases together”.