Christian Bittar, a former Deutsche Bank trader imprisoned in 2018 for manipulating the Euribor benchmark interest rate, has had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal following an extended legal struggle. The decision marks another significant reversal in the sprawling rate-rigging scandal that has now seen 18 of 19 convicted traders exonerated. Bittar, who participated in proceedings via video link from Switzerland after being denied a visa to attend court in person, expressed relief at the outcome.
The overturning of Bittar's conviction follows the Court of Appeal's decision earlier in the week to quash the convictions of five former Barclays traders—Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Alex Pabon, Colin Bermingham and Philippe Mouryoussef—who had pursued a decade-long fight for justice. Both sets of appeals were enabled by a landmark Supreme Court ruling issued in July 2025 that found trial judges had fundamentally misdirected juries about the legal standards required to prove wrongdoing in interest rate manipulation cases.
Bittar was sentenced to five and a half years after pleading guilty in 2018; according to legal reporting, the Court of Appeal indicated it would publish its full written reasons for quashing his conviction at a later date. His barrister had argued that he entered his guilty plea based on earlier court decisions that misstated what prosecutors were required to demonstrate, a position that legal sources confirm the Serious Fraud Office opposed during the appeal process.
What was the rate-rigging scandal?
The scandal centred on the manipulation of Libor and Euribor, two critical benchmark rates that track the cost of borrowing cash between banks and have been used to set interest rates on millions of mortgages and commercial loans worldwide. Libor and Euribor once underpinned approximately $450 trillion in financial contracts, including derivatives and student loans, making their integrity fundamental to global financial markets.
The misconduct came to light in 2012, when it emerged that during the 2008 financial crisis, banks had been misrepresenting their borrowing positions during the rate-setting process. Traders and brokers sought to influence these benchmarks to boost profits and conceal their institutions' financial difficulties. A total of 37 City traders and brokers were prosecuted across nine criminal trials held in London and New York between 2015 and 2019.
How many traders have now been exonerated?
Eighteen of the 19 convicted traders have now been acquitted following successful appeals. Only one remains convicted: former Barclays trader Peter Johnson, who was also one of the original whistleblowers in the scandal. Johnson pleaded guilty on legal advice that he had minimal prospects of success at trial, though official sources confirm he has now applied to appeal against his conviction.
The cascade of overturned convictions began with Tom Hayes, the first trader jailed for interest rate rigging in 2015 with an initial sentence of 14 years, later reduced to 11 on appeal. Hayes and Carlo Palombo, jailed in 2019, had their convictions quashed by the Supreme Court in July 2025. Hayes is now pursuing damages claims against his former employer UBS. All convictions in the United States had already been overturned in 2022 after an appeal court determined there was insufficient evidence that traders' requests had violated any rules or laws.
What was the legal error that led to these reversals?
In 2015, during the first trial of UBS trader Hayes, Mr Justice Jeremy Cooke ruled as a matter of law that any attempt to influence the rates could not be lawful, and that any rate influenced by commercial interest must automatically be false. Judges in all eight subsequent trials adopted this same approach, effectively removing from juries the ability to assess whether individual requests were actually improper.
The Supreme Court's July 2025 decision found that all trial judges had erred in this instruction. The court determined that whether traders' requests were right or wrong was properly a matter of fact for juries to decide, not something judges could rule on as a matter of law. This fundamental correction of the legal framework undermined the foundation of every conviction secured in the UK trials.
What have the exonerated traders said?
I have waited a very, very long time for this day.
Bittar told the BBC after learning of the Court of Appeal's decision. In a fuller statement, he added:
Finally the injustice of what I and others suffered has been recognised. I am so grateful for those who stood by me through this ordeal and those who worked so tirelessly to correct it.
Bittar's wife, Caroline, who remains in the UK, described the emotional toll the case had taken on their family. She said they had lost 15 "valuable years" with their children "growing up with this injustice". She expressed hope that the family could now move forward:
We are looking forward to enjoying life with our family and friends without this shadow hanging over us.
What role did government and central banks play?
The BBC has uncovered evidence suggesting a much broader, state-directed manipulation of interest rates, with central banks and governments across the world applying pressure to influence the benchmarks. Significantly, evidence implicating Downing Street and the Bank of England was suppressed throughout the criminal trials, raising serious questions about the conduct of the prosecutions.
Former Conservative cabinet minister David Davis told the BBC that the exonerated traders had been victims of a series of miscarriages of justice. He characterised their prosecution as a "scapegoating exercise" that arose from the government's own misconduct:
The people exonerated this week and before were the victims of a scapegoating exercise which arose as a result of the government's own misbehaviour in lowballing [falsely understating] Libor interest rates themselves, in order to try and rescue the economy after their own self-induced crash in the late 2000s.
These allegations have prompted lawyers and senior politicians to call on the Bank of England and the Treasury to release all their records concerning their own roles in interest rate manipulation during the financial crisis, amid concerns that the central bank and government involvement in rate rigging may have been deliberately concealed.
What happens next?
The Court of Appeal has indicated it will publish its written reasons for quashing Bittar's conviction at a future date, though no specific publication timeline has been announced. Peter Johnson's appeal against his conviction is now proceeding through the courts. The Serious Fraud Office, which opposed Bittar's appeal, has stated it respects the Court of Appeal's decision.
The broader implications of these reversals extend beyond the individual traders. The systematic overturning of convictions based on judicial misdirection has reopened questions about the integrity of the prosecutions and the extent to which legitimate market activity was criminalised while actual state-level misconduct went unpunished.
