The Court of Appeal has quashed the fraud conviction of former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar, extending a series of successful challenges to Britain’s prosecutions over manipulation of benchmark interest rates.
The decision, announced in London on 9 October 2026, makes Bittar the eighth person to have a UK conviction overturned in the Libor and Euribor cases. His appeal is particularly notable because his conviction followed a guilty plea, rather than a jury verdict after a contested trial.
Bittar pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to defraud in connection with attempts to influence Euribor, the Euro Interbank Offered Rate. He was sentenced to five years and four months in prison. His legal representatives challenged the basis on which that plea had been entered.
The Court of Appeal confirmed the conviction had been quashed but had not published its detailed written reasons when the decision was reported. It would therefore be premature to present a particular legal argument as the definitive ground for Bittar’s successful appeal.
The ruling follows the reversal on 7 October of convictions involving five former Barclays traders: Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham. Their cases formed part of the UK’s long-running investigations into the submissions used to calculate benchmark interest rates.
Two other convictions, those of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, were overturned by the Supreme Court in July 2025. Together with the five Barclays appeals and Bittar’s ruling, those decisions account for the eight reversals reported this week.
The cases were brought by the Serious Fraud Office, which investigated trading behaviour involving benchmark submissions at major international banks following the financial crisis. The agency has said it respects the decisions of the courts while remaining committed to investigating serious and complex economic crime.
Libor and Euribor were used to establish reference interest rates for loans, derivatives and other financial agreements. Participating banks supplied assessments of borrowing costs, which were combined under the relevant benchmark methodology to calculate published rates.
Prosecutors alleged that some traders attempted to influence those submissions to obtain advantages for positions held in financial markets. The criminal charges required the prosecution to establish conspiracy to defraud under the law applicable to the conduct at the time.
The 2025 Supreme Court judgment in the Hayes and Palombo cases examined the legal directions given to juries about those submissions. The justices held that a judge had incorrectly treated the influence of trading advantage as necessarily making a submission dishonest or non-genuine as a matter of law.
Whether a submission was genuine and whether defendants had dishonestly agreed to procure false or misleading rates were factual questions requiring proper consideration. The Supreme Court found that the erroneous directions undermined the safety of those two convictions and ordered them quashed.
The judgment did not hold that every effort to influence a benchmark was legitimate. It recognised that a properly directed jury might, depending on the evidence, reach a conviction. That distinction matters when assessing what the subsequent reversals do and do not establish.
The five former Barclays traders’ appeals were resolved against that changed legal background. Bittar’s case involved different procedural circumstances, including his guilty plea. His specific appellate reasoning must be distinguished from the findings formally published in the earlier Supreme Court judgment.
For the individuals involved, the quashed convictions follow years of criminal proceedings, imprisonment and consequences for professional and personal lives. Some defendants have criticised the original prosecutions, although those criticisms are separate from the conclusions reached in the judgments.
The cases also raise questions about the treatment of technical market practices in criminal proceedings. The terms of a benchmark, the evidence of traders’ intentions and the distinction between an inappropriate commercial practice and a criminal offence can be decisive when liability is disputed.
Those questions matter to financial institutions and their advisers because markets depend on both clear conduct expectations and reliable legal processes. Internal communications, trading records and explanations of how submissions were calculated may be scrutinised long after the transactions concerned.
A conviction being quashed does not automatically overturn separate regulatory settlements or penalties involving banks. Nor does it establish that every allegation of market misconduct made during the investigations has been factually disproved.
The Court of Appeal’s written reasons for Bittar will provide the authoritative explanation of his individual result. Until then, the established development is that a guilty plea conviction has been set aside, bringing the number of overturned UK benchmark-rate convictions to eight.
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