Former trader launches final bid to clear his name over rate rigging

Ex-banker Tom Hayes will make a final bid to clear his name at the UK’s highest court next week.

The former UBS and Citigroup trader was convicted of rigging interest rates in 2015.

A panel of five Supreme Court justices will hear his case over three days next week after the Court of Appeal upheld his conviction in March last year.

Hayes, 45, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, later lowered to 11 years, for conspiring to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), between 2006 and 2010.

One of 38 traders prosecuted for manipulating the rate, he claims he was made a scapegoat for the financial crisis. 

He claims the ordeal destroyed his career, his marriage and his physical and mental health. The former trader served five-and-a-half years of his sentence and was released on licence in January 2021.

Libor was scrapped after a scandal in 2012 when it emerged bankers at several financial institutions had colluded to rig the borrowing rate, submitting artificially low or high rates.

Ex-Barclays trader Carlo Palombo, 46, will also have his case heard next week. He was convicted in 2019 in a case regarding Euribor, another benchmark.