Former Barclays traders in court on Libor claims
THREE ex-Barclays traders appeared in court yesterday after the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) charged them with conspiracy to defraud by entering false Libor submissions.
Jonathan James Mathew, 31, Peter Charles Johnson, 59, and Stylianos Contogoulas, 42, confirmed their names and addresses to Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
The SFO claims that between 1 June 2005 and 31 August 2007 they conspired to dishonestly submit the false rates to the benchmark interest rate.
The prosecutors argued the trio did this in an effort to give traders a better chance of making higher profits or smaller losses, and ultimately to increase bonus costs.
And the SFO claimed the immediate victims of this attempted manipulation would have been Barclays’ counterparties.
The ex-traders agreed to bail conditions.
Mathew and Johnson have surrendered their passports to the SFO and will attend their local police stations once per week.
Contogoulas lives in Athens and so has kept his passport, but has agreed to £40,000 bail.
The three will appear in Southwark Crown Court on Monday 3 March.