A former Barclays trader’s conviction for rigging the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) has been referred back to the Court of Appeal, in a case bearing similarities to that of Tom Hayes.
Carlo Palombo was convicted of conspiracy to defraud by rigging the EURIBOR benchmark interest rate between January 1 2005 and December 31 2009. He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment following a March 2019 trial at Southwark Crown Court.
Palombo applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in July, after it announced a similar conviction relating to the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) was being referred for appeal. Tom Hayes, who was convicted in 2015 of multiple charges of conspiracy to defraud in relation to rigging LIBOR, had his case referred to the Court of Appeal earlier this year.
Last year Hayes had a US criminal case in relation to Libor manipulation dismissed by a New York judge. The court said there was ‘no provable case’ after the convictions of two other traders were overturned.
The CCRC noted in a statement that a US court judgment on Libor in January 2022 quashed the convictions of two other former traders convicted in similar circumstances.
‘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 Mr Palombo’s conviction.’ it said.
CCRC chairman Helen Pitcher OBE said: ‘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.
‘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.’
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