The New York Council of Defense Lawyers, or NYCDL, has thrown its support for two former traders of Deutsche Bank. Gavin Campbell Black and Matthew Connolly had recently filed their briefs with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. These filings were made to request the overturning of their conviction, where they were found guilty of LIBOR rigging.

Standing Up For Two Former Traders

It was earlier this week when NYCDL filed an amicus brief, or a letter by a friend to the Court itself. Within this amicus brief, NYCDL is showing its support to both Connolly and Black, urging that their convictions be reversed.

According to NYCDL, this case, in particular, is of special interest to the group. This is due to the direct implications of NYCDL’s core concerns in regards to promoting clear standards of the imposition of criminal liability, as well as combatting unwarranted extensions regarding criminal statutes.

It’s All A Matter Of Opinion

According to NYCDL, the allegations regarding fraudulent representations within the case, being estimates of interest rates that Deutsche Bank AG, the former employer of the defendants, could borrow funds within the interbank market. As NYCDL explains it, these estimates were more a matter of opinion than anything else.

The group stated that the rates submitted were all reasonable estimates of the anticipated borrowing costs of Deutsche Bank. As such, the defendants, according to NYCDL, did not cause and had no intent to cause Deutsche Bank to submit a false rate.

As it stands now, NYCDL is criticizing the theory behind the prosecution of the Government. According to the Government, the defendants had committed fraud by making Deutsche Bank submit estimates that were modified to take the bank’s trading positions into account. The theory itself was endorsed by the District Court, as well.

The Many Concerns

The Council stressed that such actions are not, and have never been the law. NYCDL explained that a defendant needs to make a false statement while knowing or otherwise believing it’s a fraudulent statement before they can be charged with criminal fraud.

These statements that the defendants had made were ones of opinion, according to NYCDL, which means the Government must first establish that the defendants had known the idea was inherently false. At the very least, the Council concluded that it must be proven that the defendants did not have a reasonable basis to make these opinions, at minimum, for this to be a fraud case.

The Council argued that the Government didn’t even try to prove that the LIBOR estimates of Deutsche Bank were false or unreasonable, or whether even the defendants believed them to be so. This comes after the Government had failed to prove that the defendants had participated in a scheme to issue out LIBOR estimates that were fraudulent.