Jailed traders mount bid to quash conviction after Supreme Court ruling
Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef and Christian Bittar are all seeking acquittal on appeal, lawyers for the four men said.
It follows the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, two former investment bank traders, on charges of rigging Libor and Euribor respectively.
The pair were found to have not received a fair trial because of how the jury was directed.
The convictions came after an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in the aftermath of the financial crisis into claims that traders were manipulating key interest rate benchmarks by submitting false information to the market.
Overall, the case led to nine convictions for fraud, with two traders pleading guilty and the rest found guilty by juries.
Merchant and Mathew were ex-Barclays traders found guilty of conspiracy to defraud in 2016 after a three-month trial at Southwark Crown Court.
The judge ruled that the pair had conspired to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, known as Libor, which was once used to price more than £270tn of financial products globally.
Mathew was given a four-year sentence, while Merchant was given a six and a half years. Merchant, who was born in India, renounced his British citizenship and was deported in 2018.
Moryoussef, also an ex-Barclays trader, and Christian Bittar, who formerly worked for Deutsche Bank, were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud in relation to the euro interbank offered rate, known in the City as Euribor.
Moryoussef was sentenced in 2018 to eight years in jail, with the judge saying: 'Greed was clearly his principal motivation. Although his income was more than generous by anyone's standards, he thought he deserved more.'
Bittar was sentenced to five years and four months.
On Thursday night, a lawyer representing the group said: 'Following the Supreme Court's landmark decision yesterday to quash the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, all four of our clients now intend to appeal against their convictions.'
Mr Hayes, who served five and a half years in prison for fraud, said after the Supreme Court ruling that all those jailed on similar charges to his should have their convictions overturned.
The SFO, which was contacted for comment, said earlier this week: 'We have considered this judgment and the full circumstances carefully and determined it would not be in the public interest for us to seek a retrial.'
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