TOM HAYES' LETTER FROM PRISON: The ex-trader convicted of rigging LIBOR outlines his new appeal

LONDON - Tom Hayes, the former banker convicted for his role in rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), has written a letter from Lowdham Grange prison in Nottinghamshire outlining why he is appealing his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

The CCRC is an independent public body that investigates possible miscarriages of justice.

Hayes originally tried to appeal to the Supreme Court last year, but the case was rejected in March 2016 and now he is now launching a fresh appeal because there were six areas where his trial was "deficient," he claims.

Here is the full letter he wrote from prison, sent to Business Insider:

"Following the acquittal of all of my co-defendants and the emergence of fresh evidence not previously disclosed to me by the Serious Fraud Office, I am now submitting my application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I have asked them to consider my request for a new appeal against conviction and sentence.

"I continue to maintain my innocence and it is my case that I did not have a fair trial. It is my case that my trial was deficient in a number of important areas, including:

"(1) A failure by the Serious Fraud Office to disclose to me evidence undermining the basic premise of the case against me. This evidence demonstrates that the LIBOR regime did in fact permit commercial influences on LIBOR rates, provided the rates were "representative" of borrowing costs. This was a key plank of my defence: I have always maintained that the LIBOR submissions I requested were factually accurate and that commercial considerations were permitted, indeed normal. The fresh evidence that I have uncovered gives rise to serious questions regarding the accuracy of evidence given under oath by a key prosecution witness, a witness whose evidence contributed significantly to the jury directions issued in my case;

"(2) The circumstances surrounding my participation in a co-operation programme, and whether the content of the resultant interviews should have ever been shown to my jury. It is my case that the prosecution offered me protection from extradition to the US and that this took the form of a promise to frame my charges in a certain way in order to ensure that I could not be extradited due to the application of double jeopardy laws. It is my case that I was coerced into making false confessions simply in order to get a trial in the UK, so I could stay near to my wife and then infant son, and that my "confessions" were written for me by another;

"(3) A failure by the Serious Fraud Office to properly and independently investigate my former employer banks, UBS and Citibank, leading to a failure to obtain or disclose key evidence concerning the working norms and bank practices relating to the formulation and submission of LIBOR rates at those banks. Had such an investigation been conducted, it would have been apparent that the accuracy of evidence given under oath at my trial by prosecution witnesses was inconsistent with other evidence already in existence, and also that key evidence that I needed for my defence had been suppressed;

"(4) A failure by the Serious Fraud Office to obtain or disclose to me evidence of central bank involvement in the LIBOR rates set by banks, including the Bank of England and Swiss National Bank;

"(5) The decision by Leading Counsel for the prosecution to say to my jury that the market trading range for interbank cash does not exist, when it does exist as a matter of fact. This absurd contention, put to my jury during closing speeches, resulted in the removal of a key limb of my defence: that the LIBOR submissions I requested did reflect the bank's borrowing costs;

"(6) The failure to allow my jury the benefit of medical evidence concerning my Asperger's, and the attempt by the Serious Fraud Office to deny my jury any knowledge of the diagnosis itself.

"I respectfully request that the media now gives my case the scrutiny that it so desperately needs, and gives the public the truth about LIBOR. The public has been seriously misled as to the nature of the LIBOR scandal and a huge sum of tax payers' money has been used to prosecute traders for conversations regarding correct LIBOR submissions.

"Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank from the bottom of my heart those members of the public who have so kindly donated to my crowdfunding campaign - you have made this CCRC application possible, and I hope together we can find justice and truth.

"Tom Hayes