Ernest Saunders and his three co-defendants in the 1990 Guinness trial have failed in a renewed appeal against their convictions.
The London Court of Appeal ruled that a claim by the "Guinness Four" that their trial was unfair under the Human Rights Act had been rendered unarguable by a recent House of Lords decision that human rights laws were not retrospective in relation to appeals.
The three judges also rejected the argument that there had been a possibility of bias in the light of fresh evidence of an alleged plot to "nobble" the foreman of the jury.
The court upheld the convictions of former Guinness chief executive Saunders, businessman Gerald Ronson, financier Jack Lyons and stockbroker Anthony Parnes on charges relating to an illegal scheme to boost the value of Guinness shares in the run-up to the company's £2.6 billion takeover of Distillers in 1986.
The four are to seek permission to appeal to the House of Lords.
The main plank of their fresh appeal - referred back to the court by the Criminal Cases Review Commission - was that the four were robbed of their right to silence under human rights laws by being compelled to provide potentially self-incriminatory information to Department of Trade and Industry inspectors which was then used as primary evidence against them.
Their first appeal had failed in 1991. A second appeal was rejected in 1994 when the court held that it could not overrule the will of Parliament which had provided in the 1985 Companies Act that statements made under compulsion and threat of imprisonment to DTI inspectors could be used in criminal proceedings.
Many years later, the European Court of Human Rights held that they did not get a fair hearing.
Since then, so as to comply with new human rights laws, Parliament has repealed that part of the Companies Act allowing material obtained under compulsion to be used in evidence.
But Lord Justice Rose, sitting with Mr Justice Tomlinson and Sir Humphrey Potts, said today that the four could not rely on human rights which were not incorporated into English law until 10 years after the trial.
As to the complaint about the juror, the judge said no informed and fair-minded person could have concluded that the foreman was tainted by bias or the possibility of bias. Although information about the supposed nobbling plan should have been passed to the trial judge by the police, there was no reason to believe he would have discharged the foreman or the jury.
PA