26 September 2025
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Hayes and Palombo were jailed for conspiring to rig benchmark interest rates tied to contracts worth more than $300tn. But the UK’s highest court ruled their trials were fatally flawed: judges wrongly told juries that submissions influenced by commercial interests were inherently false, usurping the jury’s role to decide fact.
Lord Leggatt blasted both the Court of Appeal and the Serious Fraud Office for ‘perplexing’ errors and botched indictments. The decision threatens other rate-rigging verdicts and reignites debate over whether juries should handle sprawling financial fraud.
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