The three Libor convictions send the harshest of warnings to junior bankers, a leading white collar crime lawyer has claimed after the former Barclays bankers were found guilty of fraud.

Jonathan James Mathew, 35, Jay Vijay Merchant, 45, and Alex Pabon, 37, were found guilty at Southwark crown court in London last week of manipulating the US dollar London Interbank Offered Rate between 2005 and 2007. The verdicts were only released yesterday after a three-month trial and the defendants were not in court when reporting restrictions were lifted.

David Corker, a partner at the London law firm Corker Binning, said that the convictions “strike the harshest of warnings for those operating at relatively junior levels in financial markets and in other fields of commercial life, where the way in which business is routinely done may sometimes, years later, be characterised as criminal by those with 20/20 hindsight and a massive banking crisis for which politicians wanted to find someone to blame”.

Corker added that the conduct of the three was “widely condoned or encouraged at the time in a broken, poorly regulated system and these defendants were foot soldiers for the most part in a global financial system beyond their full understanding”.

Ruth Harris, a partner at the London law firm Hodge Jones & Allen, said: “It will be interesting to see how the Serious Fraud Office proceeds from here and whether it will continue to expand its investigation or will be satisfied with the convictions as reflecting the state of criminality in this area."

A woman who accepted £162,000 when her civil partnership broke up will today ask appeal judges to set aside that “unfair” settlement, claiming she has discovered her late partner had £6 million in hidden assets.

Helen Roocroft, from Bolton, had an 18-year relationship with Carol Ann Ainscow, a property mogul, before they separated in 2009. Ainscow, whose property company Artisan, transformed flats, bars and restaurants on Canal Street in Manchester, died aged 55 from a brain tumour in 2013.

During dissolution proceedings, Ainscow submitted documents to court suggesting her wealth had been reduced significantly following the property crash brought about by the 2008 recession.

This led Roocroft, who was unable to claim legal aid and had to represent herself during parts of the proceedings, to accept a £162,000 settlement in 2010.
However after Ainscow’s death, Roocroft discovered information that led her to believe that her former civil partner had not been truthful about the full extent of her assets and income to the courts.

The 41-year-old instructed family lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to seek to overturn the original agreement made with Ainscow so that a new agreement could be negotiated with the estate based on an “honest assessment of their assets”.

The High Court concluded that her application had no merit and dismissed the claim at a hearing in June 2014, with judgment given in July that year. Roocroft secured permission in January last year to appeal that decision.

Today’s appeal is the latest in a series of challenges over allegations of what courts refer to as “material non-disclosure”. Last year Varsha Gohil and Alison Sharland challenged their divorce settlements at the Supreme Court after their former husbands were found to have misled them significantly regarding their wealth.

Britain’s highest court improved its efficiency last year, hearing more cases in fewer days, its annual report published yesterday revealed.

Supreme Court justices heard 92 appeals last year, three more than in the previous year, while sitting for significantly fewer days. The court sat for 136 days in 2014-15 – 32 more than in the previous 12 months. However the court delivered exactly the same number of judgments (81) in both years.

The report showed that the court has continued to sit more often as a panel of more than five justices, which it does when asked to depart from a previous decision of the Supreme Court or the House of Lords, or when a case raises an issue of particularly high constitutional or public importance.

The court sat as a panel of seven or nine justices in 14 per cent of appeals during 2015-16, a 2 per cent increase on the previous year and well up on the 9 per cent in 2013/14.

Supreme Court justices were also asked to deal with a growing number of urgent cases. The report listed appeals where the parties formally requested expedition but the number of cases highlighted as having been dealt with within a matter of weeks from initial application to full judgment rose from three in 2014-15 to nine a year later.

Prosecution of joint enterprise cases needs to be clearer in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling, an expert report claims today.

Allegations of joint enterprise crimes should be routinely monitored and recorded – and the term itself replaced as it is seen as toxic, said researchers from the Institute for Criminal Policy Research of Birkbeck, University of London, who wrote the report with the Prison Reform Trust.

The recommendations come after a landmark Supreme Court judgment ruled that the law had taken a wrong turn 30 years ago regarding joint enterprise, and that it required correction. The Court of Appeal is considering several test challenges which could have implications for hundreds of people in prison convicted under joint enterprise.

According to the report, although the ruling went some way towards simplifying the law, the way in which different types of liability under joint enterprise are applied in serious cases remains “complex in terms of both legal doctrine and practical effect”.

In addition to routine recording and monitoring of cases, the report calls for improved Sentencing Council guidance for judges dealing with multi-defendant cases.

A Conservative MP has joined forces with Sir Cliff Richard in a bid to change the law to protect the anonymity of those accused of sexual assault and rape.

Nigel Evans, a former deputy speaker in the House of Commons and the MP for Ribble Valley, was unanimously found not guilty of nine sexual allegations, including one of rape, following a five-week trial in 2014.

It is understood that Evans spoke to the pop star last weekend at a meeting that also involved Paul Gambaccini, the BBC radio DJ. Police dropped an investigation into allegations of sexual assault against Gambaccini a year after he was arrested.

The three were reported to have discussed plans to launch a victim support group for those wrongly accused of sexual assault. They are also understood to be aiming to campaign for anonymity for sexual assault defendants before they are charged.

Sir Cliff was publicly named two years ago as a suspect in a sex abuse investigation into historical allegations. The investigation was dropped last month.

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