Kweku Adoboli, the so-called rogue trader of UBS AG who lost $2.3 billion in unauthorized trades, went on trial at Southwark Crown Court in London, and the prosecutor said the scale of his gambling was such that his losses could have exceeded the bank’s resources.
Bloomberg reported Friday that Adoboli has denied charges of fraud and of falsification of exchange-traded fund transactions and other documents needed for accounting purposes going as far back as October 2008. Prosecutor Sasha Wass told a jury in criminal court that he “lied to his bosses” to hide his massive trading losses, which amounted to “gambling.”
“At one stage, Mr. Adoboli was in danger of losing the bank nearly $12 billion of unhedged investments,” she said, according to Reuters. Bloomberg quoted her saying, “The scale of Mr. Adoboli’s gambling was so large and so unchecked he could have quite easily approached and even exceeded the limits of the bank’s resources.”
Reuters reported her saying that at that point, “He had been sucked into the gambler’s mindset and he started throwing good money after bad. He was putting the very existence of the bank at risk.”