A former trader who had his conviction quashed for “rigging” interest rates following a 10-year legal battle is suing his former employer UBS.
Tom Hayes launched a legal claim for malicious prosecution against the Swiss banking giant, claiming he was the bank’s “hand-picked scapegoat” in one of the biggest scandals of the 2008 financial crisis.
In July, Mr Hayes had his conviction overturned by the UK Supreme Court after it was ruled unfair. He had been jailed in 2015 for manipulating interest rates used for loans between banks.
A complaint filed in a US court said the Mr Hayes was seeking $400m (£300m) in damages. UBS declined to comment on the case.
The filing said Mr Hayes was taking legal action in a bid to “deter and punish UBS for its role in intentionally directing the destruction of an innocent man’s life for their own selfish reasons”.
His lawyers claim the global banking giant misled US authorities with the aim of branding him the “evil mastermind” behind alleged Libor misconduct in an effort to protect its senior executives and minimise regulatory fines.
The complaint, filed in Connecticut, also claims UBS “gained control over the investigation into its own alleged misconduct” and conducted a “fundamentally flawed” investigation in order to pin the blame on Hayes.
It added that UBS “offered Hayes up on a silver platter” to be prosecuted in both the US and the UK, and that those prosecutions were “engineered by UBS’s intentional false and misleading disclosures”.
The original case against Mr Hayes was brought by the Serious Fraud Office.
He was among 19 City traders convicted in the US and/or the UK for manipulating so-called Libor and Euribor interest rates, which are used to set borrowing costs on a range of loans such as mortgages and car finance deals.
Mr Hayes was the first banker to be jailed over the scandal in 2015, condemned by prosecutors at the time as the “ringmaster” of an international fraud conspiracy.
He was released in January 2021 and charges against him in the USA were dismissed in 2022. In July this year the UK Supreme Court quashed the convictions of Mr Hayes and Carlo Palombo, a former Barclays trader who was also jailed.
The Supreme Court judges found that the history of the prosecutions for interest rate manipulation, in which 37 people were charged and nine trials held in London and New York, raised serious questions about the capacity of the courts to correct judicial error.
“It has taken me over a decade to overturn my wrongful conviction and clear my name. My legal team are now rightfully holding UBS to account for scapegoating me in order to save billions in fines and protect its senior executives,” said Mr Hayes.
“My life was ruined by the bank’s actions – I lost my liberty and my marriage, missed out on my son’s childhood, and my physical and mental health suffered terribly.
“UBS also destroyed my reputation and career.”
The Libor scandal came to light in 2012, when it was discovered that banks were artificially inflating rates to profit from trading and were also lowering them to mask the troubles they faced following the outbreak of the global financial crisis.
The financial crisis began in 2008 and led to the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers. It sent shockwaves through the global financial system, triggering recessions in many countries.
The BBC uncovered evidence of a much larger, state-led “rigging” of interest rates, under pressure from central banks and governments across the world during the financial crisis.
In the US the conduct for which Mr Hayes was originally jailed in the UK is no longer regarded as a crime after an appeal court decided the conduct of which they were accused did not break any rules nor laws.
“Nothing can give me back those lost years, or make up for the stress and trauma exacted on me and those close to me,” said Mr Hayes.
“I hope to win my claim and make substantial donations to charities which seek to right miscarriages of justice.”
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