* Former Barclays trader Merchant gets longest sentence
* Three others get 33 months to four years
* High-profile, 11-week trial ends London's third Libor case (Adds judge's comments, details)
By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - Four former Barclays bankers were sentenced to between 33 months and six-and-a-halfyears in jail by a London judge on Thursday for conspiring torig global benchmark interest rates.
Calcutta-born Jay Merchant, 45, the most senior of the mento face a jury in the case, was sentenced to six-and-a-halfyears in the latest London Libor trial. The New York-basedformer derivatives trader was convicted unanimously.
Merchant's junior, 38-year-old American Alex Pabon, wassentenced to two years and nine months and junior British Liborsubmitter Jonathan Mathew, 35, was handed a four-year sentence.Both men were convicted by majority verdict.
Mathew's former boss, 61-year-old former Barclays veteranPeter Johnson was also sentenced to four years. The formersenior dollar Libor submitter and head dollar cash traderpleaded guilty in October 2014 and did not stand trial.
Judge Anthony Leonard said the men had abused their positionof trust, undermined the integrity of the banking industry andoffended over a significant period. They will serve half theirsentence in prison before being released on licence.
They were promptly led out of the glass-enclosed dock bycourt officials.
The sentences come four years after Barclays became thefirst of 11 powerful banks and brokerages to be slapped with ahefty fine for their role in the rate fixing scandal, sparking apolitical backlash that forced out former CEO Bob Diamond, anoverhaul of Libor rules and the criminal inquiry.
HAYES MISCONDUCT "SIGNIFICANTLY" DIFFERENT
The men had faced sentences of up to 10 years after theywere each charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud byplotting to rig Libor (London interbank offered rate), abenchmark for rates on around $450 trillion of financialcontracts and loans, between June 2005 and September 2007.
But the sentences fall far short of the original 14-yearjail term handed last August to Tom Hayes, a mildly autisticformer UBS and Citigroup trader, in the world'sfirst Libor-rigging trial.
Judge Leonard accepted that the scale of Hayes's misconduct,cast as a ringleader in a global conspiracy with staff from 10other banks and brokerages to rig yen-denominated Libor overfour years, was significantly different to the Barclays case.
Hayes' sentence was cut to 11 years on appeal and he plans afurther appeal.
Two British former Rabobank bankers, Anthony Allen andAnthony Conti, were subsequently sentenced to two years and oneyear and a day in prison respectively in the first U.S. Libortrial.
But judge Leonard declined to take the comparative lightnessof those U.S. jail terms into consideration.
"The sentences for each of those convicted of Libor riggingvaries significantly, which indicates that the judge has taken ahighly fact-sensitive approach in each case," said David Corker,a partner at law firm Corker Binning.
A lawyer for Pabon declined to comment. Lawyers for theother men did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
CHEATING
Prosecutors said New York-based Merchant and Pabon weredriven by greed to scheme with London-based Libor submitters,responsible for sending the bank's daily cost of borrowingestimates to a Libor administrator, to skew rates to make moremoney for themselves and Barclays and cheat others.
In an 11-week trial, the Barclays traders denied dishonesty,argued their bosses sanctioned attempts to influence rates, thatthey did so in full view of compliance staff and that suchpractices were widespread at the time.
Johnson had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity. He expressed contrition and said he was motivated only by a desireto be a team player and had not adjusted rates to suit his owntrading book. He also denied allegations that he bullied Mathew.
James Hines, leading SFO counsel, has told the court tradersstopped trying to influence Libor rates when the credit crisisstruck in the fourth quarter of 2007 only because another formof Libor manipulation began.
He said there was "little doubt" that Johnson had beeninstructed to reduce Libor submissions by senior Barclaysmanagement keen to paint a rosier picture of its financialhealth in a practice that has become known as "low-balling".
Barclays in 2012 admitted and accepted responsibility forlow-balling during the credit crisis and for allowingderivatives traders to manipulate Libor rates. It paid athen-record $450 million penalty to U.S. and Europeanauthorities.
(Reporting By Kirstin Ridley; editing by Jon Boyle and KeithWeir)
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