Bank clerk jailed for ‘outrageous’ €90m scam

A GREEDY bank clerk was jailed for nine years for trying to steal nearly £72 million (€90.6m) from HSBC.

Jagmeet Channa, 25, who worked at the Canary Wharf headquarters of Britain’s biggest bank, hijacked colleagues’ identities to plunder its coffers in “one of the biggest frauds of its kind”.

Hoping the looming weekend would help hide his betrayal, he followed the orders of fellow conspirators by first sending €60m from one of its trading accounts to Morocco.

Minutes later he wired €30m to a branch of Barclays in Manchester.

But insider Channa, who was expecting a substantial cut for his “audacious and outrageous” crime, forgot the account he raided had to show a zero balance at the end of each day.

The massive debit was first discovered by HSBC workers in Malaysia on a Sunday. They alerted their colleagues in London and an investigation was launched.

Unfortunately, electronic footsteps on the bank’s mainframe initially pointed the finger of suspicion at Channa’s two colleagues, whose passwords had been used for the transactions.

They were arrested, questioned and after convincing denials were declared innocent.

Shortly afterwards security camera checks identified Channa.

But by then both Barclays and the bank in Casablanca had been contacted, the account frozen and the stolen money returned.

Police said his “staggering dishonesty” amounted to one of the largest frauds of its kind.

Channa, of Church Road, Ilford, Essex, who had only been working at the bank for a year, admitted one count of conspiracy to defraud between April 1 and 18 this year and one of money laundering by sending the larger sum to the western Saharan state.

The since-sacked finance desk clerk showed no reaction as Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC told him: “Huge sums of money were involved. These speak for themselves.”

The judge told Channa that while his guilty pleas would attract some credit, “the evidence against you is quite overwhelming”.

His confession, age, remorse, and the fact he had not made a penny from his dishonesty, were among the few other things in his favour.

The judge appeared to bemoan his limited sentencing powers, comparing the maximum 10-year sentence available to him with the 14 years that could be passed for handling and burglary.

“I must do all that I can to deter those employed by financial institutions from committing such offences,” he said.

“As you have demonstrated, it is all too easy to commit offences of this nature.”