Libor Mastermind Tom Hayes Appeals Jai Sentence
December 01 2015 - 06:50AM
Dow Jones News
LONDON—Lawyers for Tom Hayes, convicted in August as the
mastermind of a global interest-rate-rigging scandal, argued
Tuesday for his conviction to be overturned and his 14-year prison
sentence to be reduced.
Mr. Hayes's lawyers appeared before a panel of three judges in
the Court of Appeal. They argued that the judge in his trial, which
ran for nine weeks over the summer, gave improper instructions to
the jury and wrongly excluded certain evidence that would have
helped the defense.
The defense also argued that the 14-year sentence, which trial
judge Jeremy Cooke argued was necessary to send a deterrent message
to the rest of the banking industry, was excessive.
The appeal is being heard by some of the U.K.'s most prominent
judges, including John Thomas, the head of the judiciary for
England and Wales, and Brian Leveson, who rose to fame by chairing
a 2012 public inquiry into British media ethics. The third judge is
Elizabeth Gloster.
Mr. Hayes, a 36-year-old Briton who worked for UBS Group AG and
Citigroup Inc. in Tokyo, was the first person to be convicted by a
jury for his role in rigging the London interbank offered rate, or
Libor, and other widely used benchmark rates. Libor and its
brethren serve as the basis for interest rates on trillions of
dollars of loans and other financial contracts.
The 14-year sentence that Judge Cooke handed down in August was
one of the stiffest in recent years for a white-collar criminal.
The appeal is being closely watched not only because of Mr. Hayes's
prominent role in the Libor-rigging scandal but also because
British prosecutors are currently trying six of his alleged
co-conspirators.
Lawyers say that an overturned verdict, or even a substantially
reduced sentence, would deal a significant blow to the efforts of
British fraud prosecutors to pursue such cases.
Mr. Hayes, an intelligent but socially awkward mathematician
whom colleagues dubbed "Rain Man," was diagnosed earlier this year
with Asperger syndrome, a mild form of autism. His lawyers and
family members argued that the condition impaired his ability to
understand that what he was doing was wrong, especially because his
tactics were widespread in the industry at the time and there
weren't laws explicitly prohibiting tampering with benchmarks like
Libor.
The prosecution in Mr. Hayes's case, led by prominent British
trial lawyer Mukul Chawla, argued that the defense was presenting
nothing more than a smokescreen and that the ubiquitous nature of
Libor-rigging didn't justify Mr. Hayes's actions.
The two-day appeal hearing—being heard at London's Royal Courts
of Justice, a gothic-style stone courthouse with vaulted ceilings,
marble floors and echoing hallways—was scheduled on an expedited
basis, and lawyers say the panel could deliver its ruling within a
few days.
Regardless of the outcome, the defense and prosecution can
appeal to the U.K.'s Supreme Court.
Write to David Enrich at david.enrich@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 01, 2015 06:35 ET (11:35 GMT)
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