Court of Appeal victory for Andrew Thomas KC and Rachel Adamson in landmark SFO fraud case
Andrew Thomas KC, instructed by Rachel Adamson of Adkirk Law, has succeeded in the Court of Appeal in quashing the conviction of Colin Bermingham, a former Barclays trader convicted in the SFO’s Libor / Euribor investigations which arose from the 2008 banking crash.
The victory came after a long campaign to clear Colin Bermingham’s name in the rate-rigging investigation. Andrew and Rachel had represented Mr Bermingham at his trial at Southwark Crown Court in 2019, and later on his first appeal to the Court of Appeal in December 2020. He was one of 19 traders convicted in the UK and US on fraud allegations relating to Libor and Euribor rate-setting. The convictions were highly controversial and led to calls for a public enquiry.
The convictions began to unravel in 2022, following the decision of the Second Circuit of the US Court of Appeals in US v Connolly & Black. On Colin Bermingham’s behalf, Andrew and Rachel applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to re-open the case in the light of the US decision. That application was then deferred pending the related appeals of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo.
Those appeals led to the Supreme Court’s decision in R v Hayes; R v Palombo [2025] UKSC 29, which held that the UK cases had ‘taken a wrong direction’ following a clear error of law in the case of Tom Hayes. That error had then been replicated in all of the subsequent Libor and Euribor trials. The effect of the error had been to remove the defence case, which was that the defendants genuinely believed that the figures they had submitted were correct, from the jury’s consideration. Legal rulings that Barclays Bank had breached a contract under Belgian law were instead treated as proof that false representations had been made.
Colin Bermingham’s case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the CCRC in January 2026. The appeal was heard on 7th October 2026, presided over by the Vice Presiden Lord Justice Edis. The appeals of Colin Bermingham and four other traders convicted in other trials were all allowed.
Colin Bermingham had always protested his innocence. Following the banking crash, he and another trader had been the ‘whistleblowers’ who had alerted the authorities to the ‘low-balling’ manipulation which was taking place in the banking industry.