Yahoo Finance Tom Hayes court case begins in bid to overturn FCA ban
Tom Hayes, the former trader who is serving 11 years in jail for Libor rigging, was due to appear in court via a video link today as he fights his ban from the City.
The former UBS and Citigroup trader is due to argue in the Royal Courts of Justice that his ban from the sector should be held off while the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) decides whether to refer his case back to the Court of Appeal.
Speaking from prison, he will challenge a so-called prohibition order imposed by the City watchdog after he became the first person to be convicted of manipulating the key financial global benchmark Libor in August 2015.
This will be his first appearance in court, albeit digitally, since his confiscation hearings in March 2016 and only his second since he was sentenced in 2015.
His claim against the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was first listed in the Upper Tribunal in December last year, but this will be the first day of the hearing.
His wife Sarah Tighe is expected to attend, alongside executives from the FCA. The watchdog did not comment.
Lawyers for Mr Hayes are expected to refer to evidence in his CCRC application during the hearing.
They are applying for a stay in his ban from the City until the criminal process is resolved and the CCRC has completed its investigation into his conviction.
The CCRC, seen as a last resort following an unsuccessful appeal, accepted Mr Hayes' application earlier this year in a move that triggered other convicted Libor traders to follow suit.
The 37-year old appealed on the basis that he did not receive a fair trial because of his Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, and questioned evidence given by expert witness Saul Haydon Rowe.
Mr Hayes was the first person to be jailed for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, a benchmark used by borrowers and lenders to price trillions of pounds of financial products and contracts around the world.
At the time, the judge said the lengthy sentence was designed to act as a deterrent.
Alex Pabon, one of four former Barclays bankers jailed last summer for attempting to manipulate the rate, told The Sunday Telegraph last month that such scandals will happen “again and again” unless rules over bad behaviour are made clearer. "We didn’t understand what we were doing was wrong," he said.
