I would suggest anyone interested in learning more about this to watch the BBC documentary The Big Bank Fix. It shows how these traders didn't do anything wrong.
The documentary shows how there were some really high level bank executives involved in libor frauds and that was getting media attention. Therefore, SFO met with banks and eventually, based on documents provided by the banks, decided to prosecute simple traders.
The reason traders have been sent to trial has nothing to do with the actual libor fraud carried out by executives. But since it is still about libor, has been sold to the media as the libor trial. Start and end date of the "crime" have been carefully chosen to not include evidence of the executive crimes (such as the phone call shown in the documentary). SFO experts have admitted during trial to lie in order to convict these traders.
Many of these traders were in their early 20s when the alleged crime happened. Germany, France, and EU have already said that it was not a crime at the time and rejected extradition.
I rarely felt as sad as after watching that documentary.
I read The Spider Network (fantastic look into how bank prop trading worked) and came to mostly the same conclusions. The idea of just prosecuting "rouge traders" is a complete injustice, as trying to adjust the rate submissions was apparently a widely known practice in banks. Tom Hayes, a mildly autistic savant just doing what everyone else was got 14 years, essentially a murder sentence in the UK. Fire the traders and maybe ban them from trading for a few years.
Of course the investing public with LIBOR based loans wants blood, and they just believe the headlines that a few traders "conspired" to fix rates. In reality the entire system was built on a profoundly flawed incentive structure of trusting banks with positions that profit from LIBOR moves to not alter LIBOR submissions to make themselves money. But LIBOR is too big to fail at this point so they chose to scapegoat a few traders instead of admitting the whole system is corrupt.
The documentary shows how there were some really high level bank executives involved in libor frauds and that was getting media attention. Therefore, SFO met with banks and eventually, based on documents provided by the banks, decided to prosecute simple traders.
The reason traders have been sent to trial has nothing to do with the actual libor fraud carried out by executives. But since it is still about libor, has been sold to the media as the libor trial. Start and end date of the "crime" have been carefully chosen to not include evidence of the executive crimes (such as the phone call shown in the documentary). SFO experts have admitted during trial to lie in order to convict these traders.
Many of these traders were in their early 20s when the alleged crime happened. Germany, France, and EU have already said that it was not a crime at the time and rejected extradition.
I rarely felt as sad as after watching that documentary.