US executives charged with theft from major banks

Four executives for a group of New Jersey metal trading companies have been charged with stealing more than $600m (€664) from banks worldwide.

Viren Rastogi, one of Britain's wealthiest Asian businessmen, has also been arrested in connection with the probe.

Prosecutors accuse the men of falsely telling banks they were using loans to pay metal suppliers when they actually were wiring the money to accounts for their own use.

The men fabricated collateral and set up phoney business transactions to get the loans from JP Morgan Chase & Co, Fleet National Bank, PNC Bank, China Trust Bank and others, according to court papers filed in a US District Court in Manhattan.

"This is larceny as surely as breaking into the bank vault and hauling off bags of cash," said Jim Sheehan, acting agent in charge of the FBI's New York office.

Authorities accuse the men of carrying out fraud for the last two years while operating metal trading companies in New Jersey and London.

The scam surfaced when a bank employee decided one day to walk to the offices of a company called Jersey Metals, said US Attorney James Comey.

The employee found only a "door with a peephole in it and a teeny little sign," Mr Comey said.

Most of the banks learned they had lost money in the last month, some only in the last few days, the prosecutor said, and investigators are trying to find additional victims.

The defendants were identified as Narendra Kumar Rastogi, 47, Anil Anand, 39, Manoj Nijhawan, 43, and Udhay Shankar Balakrishna, 27.

Jeremy Temkin, a lawyer for Rastogi, said his client will plead innocent "and will defend the case vigorously".