The attempt by Tom Hayes to have his conviction for Libor-rigging overturned has been dealt a significant blow after the Criminal Cases Review Commission provisionally decided not to refer his case back to the Court of Appeal.
Hayes, 42, who was released from prison in late January after serving five and a half years, said he was “disappointed and surprised” by the decision. “I will continue to fight to clear my name,” he said.
The commission represents Hayes’s only remaining path to having his conviction and sentence quashed. He put his case to the body, which looks at possible miscarriages of justice, in early 2017 and it has taken until now for it to take a provisional view. Hayes’s team has until February 4 to respond to its findings with further submissions. This could result in the commission changing its stance before issuing its final decision on the matter.
Hayes was previously a derivatives trader at UBS and Citigroup. In 2015 he became the first person to be convicted by a jury for manipulating Libor, a benchmark that was central to the global financial system but which has now been discredited by the rigging scandal and is being replaced. He was initially jailed for 14 years, one of the longest-ever sentences for a white-collar crime, but this was reduced to 11 years on appeal. He was released after serving about half of his term.
Hayes was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism, shortly before his trial. Part of his case to the review commission had focused on the handling of this diagnosis.
