Libor Traders’ Appeal Win Could Chill U.S. Cross-Border Cases
- Convictions of Rabobank traders tossed on tainted testimony
- Court finds U.K. interviews were improperly used by U.S.
The financial district of London.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/BloombergA New York appeals court tossed out convictions of two former London-based Rabobank Groep traders for manipulating the Libor benchmark rate, ruling that their forced testimony to a U.K financial regulator was improperly used against them in a U.S. criminal trial.
The ruling Wednesday is a major setback in a seven-year government investigation of rigging in the Libor market and could undermine prosecutions of cross-border crimes. Anthony Allen and Anthony Conti were the first bankers put on trial in the U.S. Libor, the London interbank offered rate, is a daily estimate of borrowing costs among the world’s biggest banks. It’s used to value trillions of dollars of financial products, including mortgages, commercial loans and derivatives.