The six brokers found not guilty of helping Tom Hayes rig Libor interest rates have said their trial was a sham and they were made scapegoats, in heavy criticism of the Serious Fraud Office’s handling of the investigation.

They spoke outside Southwark crown court after Darrell Read was found not guilty of the one outstanding count against the brokers, meaning they have all been cleared.

The jury returned a majority verdict of not guilty against Read, prompting cheers from the other five men, who were in court supporting him a day after they were cleared.

The other brokers were Danny Wilkinson and Colin Goodman, who worked at Icap with Read; Noel Cryan, formerly of Tullett Prebon; and Jim Gilmour and Terry Farr of RP Martin. They were accused of helping the former UBS and Citigroup trader Hayes, who is serving 11 years in prison, to rig Libor.

Cryan said: “It has turned our lives upside down. Realistically, we should never have been here. We feel we’ve been scapegoated. There are things to be answered but we are not the ones who should be answering them.”

Read said the case had been a sham and that the SFO “didn’t investigate it properly and didn’t listen”.The brokers celebrated the verdict by heading to the local pub. Their trial lasted four months but the jury was out for less than a day before announcing the verdicts.

The men, whose nicknames included “Lord Libor” and “Big Nose”, were accused of acting as go-betweens by passing around requests from traders and being paid extra commission by Hayes. Libor is the interest rate at which banks borrow from each other. It underpins trillions of pounds worth of contracts, from mortgages to corporate lending.

Nick Hayes, the father of Tom Hayes, applauded the verdict and said the SFO’s investigation had been a shambles. The verdict raises the prospect of Hayes appealing his sentence.

In a series of posts on Twitter, Nick Hayes said: “Today Tom Hayes stands tall. He refused to testify versus the Libor brokers and paid the price, while they’re back with the [sic] family. I’m proud of him.”

“In conspiracy to defraud prosecution must first prove ‘agreement’ between conspirators. Where now Tom Hayes, who must’ve agreed only with himself? I strongly believe fraudsters should be behind bars. Lets start with the SFO who defrauded the UK taxpayer of millions of pounds in the Libor shambles.” A spokesman for the SFO confirmed the agency will not appeal the verdicts.

David Green, the SFO director, said: “The key issue in this trial was whether these defendants were party to a dishonest agreement with Tom Hayes. By their verdicts the jury have said that they could not be sure that this was the case. Nobody could sensibly suggest that these charges should not have been brought and considered by a jury.”

A new Libor-related trial involving a group of former Barclays traders is scheduled to begin in February. The SFO is also pursuing six individuals for allegedly rigging Euribor, the European equivalent of Libor. The jurors were told by the judge only to convict the six brokers if evidence showed that they played a “significant” role in helping Hayes rig Libor.

“You would need to be satisfied that any involvement was not minimal or merely transitory, but something which establishes significant involvement in the continuing conspiracy,” Judge Nicholas Hamblen said.

Lawyers said that the SFO had been hindered in securing prosecutions because the British legal system meant it was difficult to pursue companies as opposed to individual employees.

Alison McHaffie, a partner with law firm CMS, said: “Apart from being acutely embarrassing to the SFO, these verdicts show how difficult it is to demonstrate criminal activity by individuals for this type of type of market misconduct.

“It is always easier to bring regulatory action rather than criminal prosecution against the firms themselves. In future, the regulator will find it easier to pursue disciplinary actions against individuals for wrongdoing.”

Matthew Frankland, the solicitor for Wilkinson, said: “Ultimately, there is a hypocrisy in charging brokers. Brokers do not work for banks, they play no part in the Libor submission process and are not and never were regulated by the BBA in relation to their Libor predictions.



“The case also further highlights that, yet again, most of the individuals prosecuted in the Libor cases are relatively junior within the different organisations, with more senior people not being held to account.”

David James, the solicitor for Goodman, who was known as Lord Libor, added: “We can only reiterate what his counsel told the jury, that the SFO case was a complete shambles and should never have been brought.”