City traders' Libor case always had a whiff of scapegoating to satisfy a political wish for scalps

Other Libor convictions now look likely to be challenged. If they, too, are overthrown little will be left of the SFO's pursuit of traders

- Nils Pratley

Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, the two City traders whose convictions for manipulating a key benchmark interest rate were quashed yesterday by the supreme court, were made "scapegoats for the sins that led to the financial crisis", says Sir David Davis, the campaigning MP. It is impossible to disagree.

And Davis is right that this "major scandal" ought to prompt questions about how the traders' cases were prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office and why it took so long for their convictions to be overturned.

There has been a weirdness about these cases from day one. Hayes, a former UBS and Citigroup trader, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for conspiracy to defraud, the sort of sentence you might get for armed robbery. Hayes's alleged crime was the rather more technical one of encouraging his employer to make a dishonest submission in answer to this question: "At what rate could the bank borrow funds by asking for and accepting inter-bank offers in a reasonable market size just prior to 11am?"