Barclays traders' regret at not helping pardoned colleagues: "These guys were our friends"

As of today, the Financial Times reports that five Barclays traders sentenced to prison between 2016 and 2019 for manipulating interest rate benchmarks around a decade earlier, have had their convictions overturned. 

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While the traders - Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Philippe Moryoussef and Colin Bermingham - will be celebrating tonight, colleagues who worked alongside them at Barclays are stricken with regret.

"The whole industry should be ashamed that this happened in the first place," says one senior trader who previously worked with some of those exonerated. "These guys were friends," he adds. "We were told by lawyers employed by the bank not to communicate with them."  

Barclays declined to comment for this article. The five men were exonerated after it was accepted that the juries convicting them had been given the same inaccurate directions that juries had received in Tom Hayes' trial. These directions stated that if the individuals submitting the interest benchmarks took their own or the bank's commercial interests into account, then the submission was necessarily wrong or dishonest. 

Hayes himself served five and a half years in prison and lost his marriage and health. His conviction was overturned last year and he is now suing UBS for $400m for malicious prosecution.

Hayes told us many of his former UBS colleagues reached out to him when he was released from prison in 2021, offering help. "Some said they felt sick that they hadn't helped when I needed it," he said. "The whole thing is hard - people needed to protect themselves. I get that they had careers and families."

Speaking to The Times 58-year old Moryoussef said, "for more than eight years, I have lived under the shadow of a conviction for something I did not do. I have lost my work, my career, my reputation and my income. I have been deprived of the chance to attend my beloved son’s graduation, to visit my dear mother and to make a pilgrimage to the grave of my late father.”

Hayes said it was a "fantastic day". "Sadly the UK remains an outlier in characterising industry practice as criminal. I hope that future appeals will clarify the position and the remaining convictions will be quashed." 

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