Sentences of LIBOR manipulators should be vacated, DOJ argues
Less than a month after former Deutsche Bank traders Matthew Connolly and Gavin Campbell Black pushed against their LIBOR rigging convictions, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has voiced its objections to this motion.
On January 8, 2021, the DOJ submitted its reply to the traders’ motion at the the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. According to the Government, the convictions of both Black and Connolly have to be affirmed but their sentences have to be vacated and the duo has to be remanded for resentencing.
Let’s recall that, despite their conviction, Connolly and Black managed to avoid prison. Instead, they got home confinement sentences and were ordered to pay fines.
The DOJ disagrees with the sentences. In particular, according to the Government, the district court committed plain procedural error in sentencing Black to nine months’ home confinement in the United Kingdom.
The DOJ argues that district court plainly erred in imposing the foreign home confinement sentence without determining the feasibility of the Probation Office’s administering home confinement in a foreign country, the appropriateness of allowing Black to use his wealth to fund monitoring by a private contractor as an alternative, or the foreign policy implications of a United States court’s order that a British citizen be confined to a certain location on British soil enforced through surveillance. Put briefly, the Probation Office’s ability to carry out the sentence is not certain.
According to the DOJ, if the Probation Office determines that it cannot implement a home confinement sentence in a foreign country, Black’s sentence would contain no restrictions on his freedom, which substantially changes the punishment that the district court believed Black merited, It also makes the punishment less onerous than Connolly’s, even though the district court believed that Black was more culpable.
The Government then argues that, if the Court vacates and remands Black’s sentence, it should likewise vacate and remand Connolly’s sentence because the district court linked its consideration of the two sentences.
Let’s note that, on remand, in addition to the possibility of an imprisonment term, the Court could make other alterations to the sentences if it determines that foreign home confinement is infeasible or inappropriate, such as imposing other conditions of supervised release or increasing the fine amount.