Factbox: Three former Euribor traders face possible London retrial

By Kirstin Ridley

LONDON (Reuters) - Three former Barclays bankers face a possible retrial after a London jury was unable to reach a verdict on charges that they conspired to manipulate global Euribor interest rates.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) prosecutor said the alleged scam was masterminded by two French men: Philippe Moryoussef, who was tried and convicted in absentia, and Christian Bittar, a former Deutsche Bank trader who pleaded guilty before the trial began. He is already in custody.

Below are some details about the other four defendants who stood trial at Southwark Crown Court.

- Achim Kraemer, a 53-year-old former altar boy from a rural German village who called a priest as a character witness, said he saw nothing wrong with traders making rate requests but had little to do with them. He remains employed by Deutsche Bank.

His lawyer described him as "the boy in the class who does not get the invite to the party".

He was unanimously acquitted.

- Carlo Palombo, a 39-year-old PhD student and teaching assistant in the University of California's philosophy department, joined Barclays as a graduate trainee in his early 20s in 2002 because, he said, it was the only job that allowed him to leave Italy.

He said he had not relished being surrounded by bankers but earned almost 5.5 million pounds ($7.3 million) over the five-year period, learnt his trade from his boss, Moryoussef, and said he did not realise it was wrong to ask submitters for beneficial rates.

Palombo, who compared his seniority to "the guy who serves you at McDonald's", said: "Our job was to try to do what was good for the bank, not what was bad for the bank."

Prosecutors called him a "400,000 pound tea boy".

The jury was unable to reach a verdict in his case.

- Colin Bermingham, the oldest of the defendants at 61, was a respected cash market expert and senior rate submitter. He had left school at 18 and joined Barclays in 1974 because he could not afford university.

He said he could not remember traders making rate requests but said he would have tried to accommodate them if the requests had fallen within a range of valid market numbers.

But he said he had not realised at the time that Moryoussef was also liaising with big rivals and others before requesting rate movements.

"It makes you feel a bit used," he said, adding that he would have reported such behaviour to his boss.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict in his case.

- Sisse Bohart, a 41-year-old Dane, started at Barclays in the IT department, helping to provide desktop support for traders. She joined the euro money desk in 2004, watching and learning on the job from her boss, Bermingham.

She described Bermingham as a very supportive and knowledgeable man, who often drove her to the airport on a Friday so she could fly home for the weekend to be with her sick stepfather and, later, to see her boyfriend.

She left Barclays in 2008 and is now an IT consultant and project manager in a Swedish energy company.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict in her case.

($1 = 0.7563 pounds)

(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley; Editing by David Goodman)