The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has reinstated the antitrust claims asserted by victims of the rigging of the U.S. Dollar LIBOR interest-rate benchmark. Americans for Financial Reform welcomes this decision.

Despite admissions of wrongdoing by major banks, the many victims of this fraud – from governments to pension funds to smaller banks – have yet to be compensated for their losses. With today’s ruling, they have a better chance to recover the money wrongfully taken from them by a group of the world’s largest banks.

LIBOR is only one of the major market benchmarks that banks have admitted to manipulating.  The Second Circuit’s decision confirms that the antitrust laws are an important tool to remedy that manipulation.