Two former traders from Britain have won an appeal against their convictions for attempting to rig Libor after an American court found that their constitutional rights had been violated.
Anthony Allen and Anthony Conti, who formerly worked for Rabobank in London, expressed relief after their convictions for several offences including wire fraud were overturned.
They had been sentenced to two years and a year-and-a-day in prison, respectively, in March 2016 as part of the global investigation into Libor, a key benchmark used to price deals worth hundreds of trillions of pounds. Mr Allen, who was head of liquidity and finance at Rabobank until 2008, and Mr Conti, a former senior trader, had been on bail while they appealed.
The pair argued that the case against them depended on evidence from an earlier investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, where they were compelled to testify against themselves. The US appeals court agreed, finding that the fifth amendment to the United States constitution, which shields people from self-incrimination, protected the two men even when their evidence had been given abroad. The FCA declined to comment.