Maia Cohen-Lask quoted in the Financial Times’ feature on rate-rigging convictions being overturned in the UK and the US

Partner Maia Cohen-Lask has been quoted in the Financial Times’ feature on rate-rigging convictions being overturned in the UK and the US.

A specific offence was introduced criminalising rate-rigging in 2013, Maia says, but it had seemed “increasingly unlikely” that any banker would be prosecuted for it. Tom Hayes and his fellow traders were prosecuted under broader fraud laws, meaning, as Maia notes, that nobody has been criminally prosecuted for the specific rate-rigging offence.

Several jurisdictions took the view that rate-rigging was not a criminal offence. By the time of the Supreme Court judgment overturning Hayes’ conviction, Maia says, the UK criminal justice system was a global outlier.

Read Maia’s comments in the Financial Times.