One-time high-flying Australian financial executive Paul Thompson is set to plead guilty in a Manhattan court for his role in what prosecutors have described as "the ultimate inside job".
Thompson was extradited from Perth earlier this week and during an appearance in the US District Court on Wednesday was granted $US500,000 bond.
The 50-year-old's lawyer, Harry Sandick, told Judge Jed Rakoff that Thompson would return to court on Thursday (Friday AEST) to plead guilty to charges he conspired to manipulate LIBOR, the benchmark interest rate that affects home loan, credit card, student loans and other rates around the world.
The former managing director and head of liquidity and finance for Rabobank Asia and six other Rabobank traders were snared in a global probe.
Thompson and the former colleagues, from their offices in Singapore, London, Tokyo and Utrecht in The Netherlands, engaged in a scheme to "attempt to manipulate to their advantage the benchmark interest rates", according to a grand jury superseding indictment.
"Because traders often took large derivative positions, even small moves in the LIBOR fix could result in large swings in profits or losses from trades," the indictment states.
US assistant attorney-general Leslie Caldwell in 2014 described the alleged conspiracy as "the ultimate inside job" with traders illegally influencing the very interest rate on "which their trades were based, using fraud to gain an unfair advantage".
Two of Thompson's former Rabobank colleagues, Anthony Allen and Anthony Conti, were sentenced to two and one-year jail terms respectively.
Both have filed appeals.
