London appeal court quashes rate-rigging convictions of five former Barclays traders

Court ruling in London

London's Court of Appeal on Wednesday quashed the fraud convictions of five former Barclays employees accused of manipulating benchmark interest rates. The decision cleared Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Philippe Moryoussef, and Colin Bermingham after legal challenges that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Lord Justice Edis, sitting alongside Mr Justice Goose and Mr Justice Moody, overturned the verdicts after the Serious Fraud Office chose not to oppose the appeals.

Mathew spoke about the personal impact of the decade-long proceedings following the decision.

For the last 10 years, the stain of a criminal conviction has been a burden I have carried every minute of every day. Having this conviction quashed is not simply about correcting the record, it's about finally having validation that this is an injustice that never should have happened.

Flawed jury instructions

The decision followed a July 2025 UK Supreme Court ruling that quashed the convictions of former Citigroup and UBS trader Tom Hayes and former Barclays trader Carlo Palombo. Hayes spent five and a half years in prison before his conviction was set aside. The Supreme Court found that judges in those earlier trials gave inaccurate and unfair directions to jurors, depriving defendants of a fair hearing. In August 2026, the Serious Fraud Office acknowledged that the verdicts against the five Barclays employees were unsafe. The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the cases to the Court of Appeal in January 2026.

Barristers Andrew Thomas KC, Tom Allen KC, and Katherine Hardcastle filed joint written submissions on behalf of all five men.

The appellants' common submission is that their trials were unfair, and their convictions are unsafe, for the parallel reasons to those identified by the Supreme Court.

Sentences and asset claims

The five traders received prison terms between 2016 and 2019 across separate proceedings. In 2016, Mathew received four years, Merchant received five and a half years, and Pabon received two years and nine months for conspiracy to defraud linked to the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor). Bermingham, a former managing director at Barclays, received a five-year sentence in 2019 for offenses involving the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor).

Moryoussef received an eight-year sentence in absentia in 2018 after moving to France before his trial. French authorities refused extradition requests because the alleged conduct was not classified as an offense under French law at that time. Defense barristers also asked the court to order the return of money paid by the five individuals for confiscation orders and prosecution costs, along with interest.

Scope of the rate investigations

The Serious Fraud Office initiated its investigation into rate manipulation in 2012, examining daily interbank borrowing estimates submitted by international banks. Benchmark rates like Libor and Euribor determined interest rates on trillions of dollars in mortgages, corporate loans, and consumer credit. Regulators discovered that some institutions submitted artificial borrowing numbers to appear more creditworthy or to benefit internal trading positions during the financial crisis. Banks subsequently paid billions of pounds in regulatory fines and legal settlements, and the benchmarks were phased out in recent years.

The broader prosecutions resulted in nine convictions and 11 acquittals across several trials. In addition to Hayes, Palombo, and the five Barclays traders, the Court of Appeal will consider the case of former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar later this week. Bittar pleaded guilty to Euribor manipulation in 2018 and received a sentence of more than five years in prison.