Convicted Libor rigger unable to open a bank account after prison term
Tom Hayes, who was convicted for rigging Libor interest rates, has said he cannot get paid after seven banks have barred him from opening an account.
The former City trader was found to have acted dishonestly in trying to risk the benchmark interest rate while at UBS and Citigroup between August 2006 and September 2010.
Hayes was released from prison in January after serving five and a half years in prison of an 11 year sentence.
He opened a bank account with NatWest on 10 August but this was closed 24 hours later after the bank had carried out checks via credit reference and fraud prevention agencies.
Hayes was also told he would not be able to open an account with NatWest subsidiary the Royal Bank of Scotland and had previously received rejections from multiple other banks, Financial News reported.
The former trader was hoping to receive payment in US dollars for a half hour speech given to delegates at a financial fraud conference hosted by the University of Berkeley, California on June 25.
In Hayes’ email to NatWest, he stressed that he maintained his innocence and was expecting exoneration yet “even if that were not the case it is impossible to live without adequate financial services from mainstream providers.”
“Since my arrest in 2012 I have had a litany of accounts closed, refused to be opened and my general access to financial services is nonexistent,” the email shared with Financial News continued.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is reviewing an academic paper that claims Hayes was wrongfully convicted but is not set to reach a decision until September.
The trader’s lawyer said Hayes’ recent autism diagnosis should have been part of his 2015 trial and he was simply doing his job as he had been instructed to.
Hayes was the first trader convicted by jury of rigging Libor global interest rates, after an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.