Federal judge fines Deutsche Bank execs for LIBOR scheme News
© WikiMedia (Thomas Wolf)
Federal judge fines Deutsche Bank execs for LIBOR scheme

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced Deutsche Bank executives Matthew Connolly and Gavin Campbell on Thursday to home confinement and imposed fines, foregoing a prison sentence for their crime.

Connolly was the Director of Deutsche Bank’s Pool Trading Desk in New York, and Gavin Campbell Black was a Director on Deutsche Bank’s Money Market Directives (MMD) and Pool Trading Desks in London. The men were indicted in 2016, stemming from a scheme to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) benchmark interest rate between 2005 and 2011. The LIBOR rate is the average interest rate at which leading banks borrow funds from other banks in the London market. However, it is also the most popular international reference rate for short term interest rates.

The jury gave a verdict finding the men guilty on various counts relating to the scheme last October.

During sentencing on Thursday, Chief Judge Colleen McMahon lambasted the prosecutors for bringing the case against the two men as “proxy wrongdoers” for a more wide-ranging conspiracy. McMahon sentenced Connolly to six months’ home confinement and a $100,000 fine. Black was sentenced to nine months’ confinement and a $300,000 fine. Prosecutors had asked for harsher punishment in their sentencing memoranda for Connolly and Black, including “substantial incarceration” and fines totaling multiple millions of dollars.

Deutsche Bank settled the US and UK cases arising from the LIBOR scheme for $2.5 billion in April 2015.

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