United States v. Allen

Anthony Allen and Anthony Conti (defendants) were United Kingdom (UK) citizens and residents. Both men were former bank employees who had been involved with their bank’s London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) submission process. At some point, UK authorities discovered rampant LIBOR manipulation and began investigating the parties involved. Several years after they left their jobs with the bank, Allen and Conti were among the persons being investigated in relation to the LIBOR scandal. The UK enforcement authority, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), interviewed Allen and Conti as part of its investigation. Under UK law, Allen and Conti would face imprisonment if they had refused to testify. The testimonies of Allen and Conti were then provided to a former coworker of the two men, Paul Robson, after the FCA initiated an enforcement action against Robson. Robson annotated and took notes on the testimonies of his former coworkers. The FCA dropped the case against Robson soon after. The United States Department of Justice then initiated a case against Robson and secured a prompt guilty plea from him in addition to a promise to cooperate. As a result, Robson provided information, based in part on the testimonies that Allen and Conti had provided to the FCA, to an American grand jury. Robson’s information formed the basis for a grand-jury indictment of Allen and Conti for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, among other counts. Robson also testified at trial to the jury that convicted Allen and Conti. Allen and Conti appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.