London Appeal Court Overturns Ex‑Deutsche Bank Trader Christian Bittar’s Rate‑Rigging Conviction

LONDON: Christian Bittar, a former star Deutsche Bank trader who was jailed in Britain for conspiring to rig benchmark interest rates, won an appeal to clear his name on Friday. The decision represents a fresh setback for the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) prosecutor.

Bittar had been sentenced to five years and four months after pleading guilty in 2018 to rigging Euribor, the Euro interbank offered rate that underpins trillions of dollars in financial contracts and loans worldwide.

However, the Court of Appeal in London overturned his conviction on Friday, stating that it would issue its written reasoning at a later date.

“We argued for a different outcome but respect the court’s decision in relation to Christian Bittar,” said Jason Williams, the head of division at the SFO. “The SFO remains committed to tackling the most complex fraud, bribery and corruption.”

His appeal followed a series of recent reversals after senior judges on Wednesday cleared five former Barclays traders, further weakening the SFO’s high‑profile rate‑rigging prosecutions.

Bittar is the first person convicted of either Euribor or Libor manipulation to have his conviction overturned after pleading guilty.

Prosecutors had portrayed the derivatives traders as symbols of banker greed during a period of intense public anger over massive bank bailouts after the 2007‑2009 credit crisis, which crashed stock markets and plunged economies into recession.

The Serious Fraud Office launched a criminal investigation in 2012, eventually prosecuting 20 individuals. Seven were convicted at trial, two pleaded guilty, and eleven were acquitted during a series of London rate‑rigging trials and re‑trials between 2015 and 2019.

Eight rate‑rigging convictions have now been overturned after the Supreme Court last year ruled that legal errors had undermined the fairness of the first Libor trial — involving former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes — and a later trial of former Barclays trader Carlo Palombo.

Those errors, which concerned how judges directed juries, also tainted later rate‑rigging trials, the Court of Appeal said on Wednesday.

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