By Menna Abbas
Six people attended the hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, while a further five accused did not appear. They are the first to face criminal proceedings as a result of a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into alleged manipulation of the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor).
Euribor is an international benchmark used to set interest rates on financial products such as mortgages. It forms a vital means for European banks to calculate lending decisions in a market worth billions of euros.
The rate is used to set trillions of dollars of financial contracts. It is a cousin to the UK’s Libor and is the average interest rate at which eurozone banks lend to each other.
The 11 traders are accused of conspiracy to defraud by manipulating the rates between separate banks, as well as collusion between individuals at the same bank, between 2005 and 2009. None of the defendants who attended the hearing issued a formal plea against the charges. Britain’s SFO did not request arrest warrants for those who failed to attend.
The case was sent to a higher UK court for a hearing on Wednesday. The group is the first to face charges globally in relation to Euribor, the euro counterpart of the London interbank offered rate. A number of former traders are facing prosecution for allegedly rigging Libor.
At the hearing last week, Christian Bittar, 44, a French Singapore-based trader who was previously one of Deutsche Bank’s most lucrative money markets managers, has been ordered to front £1m in bail ahead of his trial
Achim Kraemer, 51, who still works for Deutsche Bank, was ordered to pay a security of £100,000.
Additionally, four former Barclays traders also appeared in court and were given bail orders: Colin Bermingham, 59, from Aldeburgh, Suffolk; Carlo Palombo, 37, from California; Philippe Moryoussef, 47, of Singapore; and Sisse Bohart, 38, of Denmark.
Former Societe Generale banker Stephane Esper was not present. Other Deutsche Bank employees who were also due to face charges, Andreas Hauschild, Jörg Vogt, Kai-Uwe Kappauf, and Ardalan Gharagozlou, did not attend.
The scandal was originally uncovered during the 2008 financial crash, after US regulators conducted several probes. Subsequent cross-border investigations resulted in brokerages and banks doling out roughly $9bn (£6.2bn) in regulatory settlements, and over 30 people being charged.
This case is the latest involving interest rate rigging to reach Britain’s courts. Tom Hayes was the first banker to be convicted in Britain for manipulating the benchmark rate known as Libor (the London Interbank Offered Rate). He was sentenced in August.
Numerous Libor and Euribor rigging cases emerged after the 2008 global financial crisis. UBS, Lloyds, JP Morgan, Citigroup and ICAP were all previously fined following investigations.
