Three ex-Barclays staff convicted in Libor rigging trial
About ten years later…
Three ex-Barclays workers have been found guilty of manipulating the Libor interest rate between 2005 and 2007.
Jay Merchant was convicted unanimously at Southwark Crown Court in London of rigging the key financial rate. Jonathan Mathew and Alex Pabon were found guilty by majority verdict after a ten-week trial. They will be sentenced on Thursday (7 July).
Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) is used by banks to set prices of financial products.
The jury was not able to reach a verdict, after nearly two weeks of consideration, for two other defendants, Ryan Reich and Stelios Contogoulas.
From 2005 to 2007, 16 banks, including Barclays, presented daily estimates of borrowing rates to the British Bankers’ Association, which used them to work out Libor.
According to the BBC, which was present at the trial, the jury heard the ability to organise even minor movements in the rate had the potential to generate large profits for a trader.
In May, a sixth Barclays worker Peter Johnson pleaded guilty to conspiring to manipulate the rate.
According to the BBC, the prosecution said four traders – Merchant, Pabon, Reich and Contogoulas – asked Libor rate submitters, Mathew and Johnson, to put in rates that suited their trading at the daily setting of Libor.
It is the third case to be brought by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into Libor manipulation.
The BBC adds that the SFO now has to decide whether to call a retrial of Reich and Contogoulas.
