U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York has upheld the guilty convictions of former Rabobank (RABO) traders Anthony Conti and Anthony Allen for wire fraud and conspiracy. They are accused of involvement in the scam to rig the yen Libor rates and the U.S. dollar to benefit Rabobank’s trading positions. In 2014, the Dutch lender settled European and US probes into Libor rigging for $1B.
Allen and Conti, who face up to ten years behind bars, are claiming that they didn’t receive a fair trial because Paul Robson, the federal government’s star witness, read 300 pages of statements that the two British citizens were required to give during a parallel probe in the U.K.
Conti and Allen believe that Robson may have been influenced by their compelled testimony in that case and that prosecutors therefore should not have allowed him to be a witness in the U.S. case against them. They argued that their rights against self-recrimination were violated.
Rakoff, however, ruled that Robson’s testimony was not tainted by the other investigation. He also said that prosecutors had more than enough “independent basis” to file charges against the two men and that Robson had given evidence using sources that were ”wholly independent” from the testimony of the two men.
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Ex-Rabobank traders lose bid in U.S. to overturn Libor convictions, Reuters, February 11, 2016