London's Court of Appeal on Wednesday quashed the fraud convictions of five former Barclays (BARC.L, BCS) traders who had been imprisoned for manipulating benchmark interest rates. Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham — all convicted between 2016 and 2019 and sentenced to terms ranging from 33 months to eight years — had their convictions overturned following referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The Serious Fraud Office did not oppose the appeals.
Mathew, Merchant, Pabon and Moryoussef had been convicted of conspiracy to defraud in connection with the manipulation of LIBOR, while Bermingham was convicted of a single count of conspiracy to defraud relating to his role supervising Barclays' daily submissions for EURIBOR. Mathew, Moryoussef and Bermingham were based in London; Merchant and Pabon worked at the bank's LIBOR operation in New York. All five had long since served their sentences before Wednesday's ruling. Moryoussef, who had left the UK for France, was tried in his absence and had received the longest sentence of eight years.
The ruling follows the UK Supreme Court's decision in July 2025 to overturn the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, who had been convicted in 2015 and 2019 on charges related to LIBOR and EURIBOR respectively. The Supreme Court found that trial judges had misdirected juries on an important question of law concerning what constituted dishonest manipulation of those benchmarks. The Criminal Cases Review Commission subsequently referred the five Barclays cases back to the Court of Appeal in January 2026, having determined there was no distinguishing factor between those cases and those of Hayes and Palombo. The SFO conceded in January 2026 that the convictions of the five bankers 'may be' unsafe.
The LIBOR scandal was one of the most significant to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis. LIBOR and EURIBOR were among the world's most important financial benchmarks, helping determine borrowing costs across an estimated $450 trillion of financial products including derivatives, corporate loans and mortgages [Source: Share Talk]. The episode drew criminal prosecutions across multiple institutions and jurisdictions. One related case remains active: former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar, jailed in 2018 after pleading guilty in connection with EURIBOR manipulation, is pursuing an appeal that the SFO is expected to contest.
Sources: Bloomberg, BBC Business, The Guardian, UPI, Associated Press, Reuters, Share Talk