Convicted Euribor Rigger Gets Appeal Chance

Former Barclays interest rate trader Carlo Palombo, who was convicted of conspiracy to defraud by rigging the Euribor benchmark setting process and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in the UK, has had his case referred to the UK’s Court of Appeal, by the country’s independent Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

Palombo applied to the CCRC in July 2023, the same day that it was announced the body was referring for appeal a similar conviction relating to Libor. That conviction was the very high profile case of Tom Hayes, the former UBS trader who served over five years in prison before his release in 2021.

The CCRC also observes that a US court judgment on Libor in January 2022 saw the convictions of two other former traders, Matthew Connolly and Gavin Black who worked at Deutsche Bank and were convicted in similar circumstances, quashed.

The CCRC has concluded that there is “a real possibility” that the Court of Appeal will follow the legal approach taken by the US Court and overturn Palombo’s conviction, it states.

“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 Court of Appeal in January 2022,” says CCRC chair Helen Pitcher OBE. “The CCRC recognised that Mr Palombo’s case was not dissimilar to Mr Hayes’ case.

“Following on from the Hayes referral and bearing in mind the similarity of issues we have concluded that the Court of Appeal will consider the Euribor rules in the same way, reasoning by close analogy with the US court decision,” she adds.