Former Trader Appears in London Court on Libor Fraud Charges

LONDON – Tom A.W. Hayes, a former trader at UBS and Citigroup who has been charged with fraud tied to the manipulation of global benchmark interest rates, made his first appearance in a London court on Thursday.

Standing behind a glass wall with his hands in his pockets, Mr. Hayes, 33, listened as eight fraud charges against him were read out. The charges cover a period from August 2006 to September 2010 – half related to his time at UBS and half to his time at Citigroup in Japan.

Mr. Hayes faces charges of conspiring with employees at financial institutions including UBS, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, Rabobank, Tullett Prebon, ICAP and RP Martin to seek to manipulate yen London interbank offered rates, or Libor.

His lawyer, Lydia Jonson, did not enter a plea on his behalf.

Mr. Hayes, who wore a blue shirt, beige trousers and brown shoes, spoke only to confirm his name and give his address and date of birth. Mr. Hayes is to remain on bail, which means he is not allowed to leave or attempt to leave Britain, pending his next court hearing, which is scheduled to be at Southwark Crown Court on July 4.

The charges against Mr. Hayes are the first brought against an individual by British prosecutors in the rate-rigging scandal. Mr. Hayes, a British citizen, and another former UBS trader, Roger Darin, 41, of Switzerland, have been charged with conspiracy by the United States Justice Department in a criminal complaint that was unsealed in December. United States prosecutors have also charged Mr. Hayes with price fixing, stemming from an accusation that he had collaborated with another bank to rig interest rates.

The new charges were filed nearly a year after the first settlement in the Libor case, when Barclays of Britain agreed to pay $450 million to British and American authorities. American and British authorities later reached a settlement with Royal Bank of Scotland, which agreed in February to pay $612 million over its role in the Libor scandal.

As part of a settlement with United States authorities last year, UBS agreed to pay $1.5 billion and its Japanese subsidiary pleaded guilty to one count of felony wire fraud.

UBS is one of more than a dozen global banks at the center of a continuing investigation by authorities in the United States and Britain into the manipulation of Libor, which serves as a benchmark to help set the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars of financial products like mortgages, business loans and credit cards.