Former City trader’s rate rigging conviction overturned

Christian Bittar, once a trader at Deutsche Bank, saw his conviction for rigging the Euribor interest rates overturned by the Court of Appeal on Friday. Bittar served five years in prison for his involvement in manipulating the primary European interest rate in the lead-up to the financial crisis. He had previously pleaded guilty to the charge.

The overturning of his conviction was announced by Lord Justice Edis, who gave no immediate reason for the decision. This ruling follows a similar decision last year by the Supreme Court, which overturned the convictions of former UBS trader Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, also former City traders, after they were deemed to have received "inaccurate and unfair" jury instructions.

The overturning of Bittar's conviction marks the end of a series of appeals by five former City traders convicted of rigging the Libor and Euribor rates, including Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon, and Colin Bermingham, who were all convicted despite initially pleading not guilty. The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred these cases to the Court of Appeal in January after the fraud watchdog, which brought the initial prosecutions over a decade ago, decided not to seek a retrial against Hayes and Palombo.

Bittar is the last former trader to have his appeal heard. However, the ninth and final trader pursued by the Serious Fraud Office, Peter Johnson, who worked at Barclays and was the original whistleblower in the rates-rigging scandal, is currently in the early stages of his own appeal, having also pleaded guilty and been sentenced to four years in prison. Deutsche Bank was reached for comment on the matter.