Exonerated trader resolves lawsuit claiming Deutsche Bank 'scapegoated' him

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A former Deutsche Bank trader whose conviction for rigging an interest rate benchmark was overturned has resolved a lawsuit accusing the German bank of destroying his banking career by falsely implicating him in the scheme.

A joint stipulation ending Gavin Black's $30 million civil lawsuit against the bank and another trader, James King, was filed on Thursday in a New York state court in Manhattan.

Black, a UK citizen, had been a director on Deutsche Bank's money market and derivatives desk in London.

Matthew Connolly, who once led Deutsche Bank's pool trading desk in New York, settled a similar $150 million lawsuit last month.

Seth Levine, a lawyer for Black, said on Monday his client's case has been resolved. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

Black said Deutsche Bank "scapegoated" him by lying to U.S. investigators about his alleged role in rigging the Libor benchmark from 2005 to 2011, to reduce or eliminate the bank's own criminal and civil liability.

He said the lies "ruined" his life, including by ending his banking career and permanently damaging his reputation.

Short for "London interbank offered rate," Libor underpinned hundreds of trillions of dollars of credit cards, mortgages and other financial products before being phased out in 2022.

A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Black and Connolly in 2018 of rigging Libor, with Black sentenced to nine months of confinement at his UK home and a $300,000 fine.

The federal appeals court in Manhattan overturned both convictions in January 2022, citing a lack of evidence of guilt.

King cooperated with prosecutors and testified for the government at Black's and Connolly's trial.

Last December, the judge overseeing Black's civil lawsuit declined to dismiss King as a defendant, while dismissing two other individual Deutsche Bank defendants.

Libor probes led to about $9 billion of fines worldwide for banks, including $2.5 billion for Deutsche Bank in 2015.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)