White & Case was in the news recently after we successfully represented a former trader against foreign exchange price-fixing allegations in a case the world was watching.

“I’m looking forward to resuming my life” – the reaction of Richard Usher on a highly emotional day at New York’s Southern District Court.

The London-based former J.P. Morgan foreign exchange trader had just been acquitted of allegations that he conspired to fix prices in the $5tn-a-day global foreign exchange market. The non-guilty verdict was greeted with tears of relief from Mr Usher’s family and friends after five years of fighting the case with the support of the Firm.

White & Case Boston Partner Mike Kendall, who presented the opening and closing arguments in the case, comments: “We were very confident Richard would be vindicated. Besides the fact that he had done nothing wrong, we also had an amazing team of lawyers from Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. and London. Every one of us was emotionally involved in this case.

“Had we lost, the government would have sought to have the three defendants sentenced to prison and families would have been destroyed, so the stakes were extremely high.”

Mark Gidley, Head of White & Case’s Antitrust practice and co-lead trial counsel for Mr Usher, adds: “This was a case that banks everywhere were watching. The result was a unanimous verdict in New York City that will send shockwaves around the world.”

The long path to justice

The Firm’s representation of Richard Usher began when Jonathan Pickworth joined the Firm in 2015 as Head of the London White Collar crime practice. Jonathan had been representing Richard at a previous firm since 2013 in connection with a global investigation into the foreign exchange markets by law enforcement agencies around the world, including the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.

Jonathan says: “The Serious Fraud Office dropped its own investigation in 2015 but, what should have been a day of celebration quickly turned sour when the Department of Justice in the United States announced it would be filing a case against Richard and his co-defendants, former Barclays trader Christopher Ashton and former Citigroup trader Rohan Ramchandani.

“Richard was already represented by a different law firm in the U.S., but he later contacted me to say he wasn’t happy with the amount of focus they were putting on his case, so I introduced him to Mike in Boston and Mark Gidley to show him what the Firm could offer in a U.S. trial.”

Richard was impressed by the team’s expertise, passion and confidence in his case and made the decision to switch to the Firm – no small choice given what was at stake.

Making a case

Preparation for the case was painstaking and highly complex. The prosecution’s case was based on records of conversations between the defendants in an inter-bank chatroom.

The Department of Justice aimed to use these conversations, plus star witness testimony from their former peer and fellow chatroom member, Matthew Gardiner (formerly a trader at Barclays, UBS and Standard Chartered), to prove a widespread conspiracy to fix Euro-Dollar foreign exchange rates. Matthew Gardiner received a non-prosecution agreement in return for cooperating with the prosecution.

Mike explains: “The prosecution claimed our clients were horizontal competitors who formed a cartel. To win the case, we needed to prove that the chatroom conversations were a combination of buyer-seller transactions, information exchange and a good amount of sarcastic banter. To do this, we needed to show the actual trading data refuted the government’s spin on the chatroom.

“This involved examining billions of dollars of foreign exchange trades in order to prove that our defendant always acted in an appropriate and ethical way.

“As you can imagine, it took a huge amount of time and effort, but all this hard work effectively won us the case.”

Cross-office collaboration

The involvement of the Firm’s team in London proved invaluable in building an understanding of the defence case and chatroom conversation, particularly as the defendants often used cockney rhyming slang when talking about trades.

Jonathan said: “I wouldn’t claim to be an expert in cockney rhyming slang myself, but having a basic understanding really gave us an advantage. For instance the defendants would refer to a $5 million trade as a Lady Godiva (a fiver), so we helped ensure nothing was lost in translation.”

The team also had to make some important decisions on the route to trial, including deciding not to contest Richard’s extradition to the United States even though it meant he’d need to fight the case and spend time away from his family.

Jonathan explains: “It was a really tough decision for Richard and us, but we had to consider the risk that, if we lost our battle against extradition, he would be flown to the United States as a fugitive and kept in custody for months.

“And, even if we won, Richard would spend the rest of his life knowing he couldn’t leave the UK without the threat of being stopped at an airport and extradited to the U.S.”

The trial team also had to be resolute in refusing to accept plea bargains prior to the trial, despite knowing that the Department of Justice’s conviction rate at the Southern District Court in New York was a staggering 93 per cent.

Mike said: “Though you can never be 100 per cent sure of a positive verdict, we put together such a strong case and were so convinced of Richard’s innocence that we never considered doing a deal.

“We knew the evidence of the prosecution’s star witness, Matthew Gardiner, would be key to the verdict, and I’m pleased to say we were able to turn this to the benefit of our case.”

Other key members of the team included Joanna Dimmock, Rebecca Copcutt and Fred Kelly from London, Kevin Bolan, Yakov Malkiel, Alexandra Gliga, Kelly Newman, Samuel Feldman and Karen Eisenstadt from Boston, and Andrew Tomback and Jennifer Thomas from New York.

Mark says: “This was a perfect example of people across the Firm working together collaboratively and of building a team where we can quickly pull together top people in every single area of the case.

“From the Firm’s perspective, it really showcased our White Collar and Anti-Trust capabilities.

“Our team has now secured four major criminal trial wins over the Department of Justice Anti-Trust Division – a record unmatched by any other law firm.”