Trader in $2.3bn fraud case ‘sorry beyond words’
Kweku Adoboli, 31, faced an additional charge of fraud as he made a brief appearance in front of a packed City of London Magistrates’ Court but did not enter a plea or appeal for bail.
“He is sorry beyond words for what has happened,” defence lawyer Patrick Gibbs told the court. “He went to UBS and told them what he had done, and stands now appalled at the scale of the consequences of his disastrous miscalculations.”
Prosecutor David Levy said Adoboli had been charged with a new count of fraud dating from 2008 to 2010, to add to the existing fraud charge in 2011 and two charges of false accounting.
One of the fraud charges refers to a sum of at least $1.5bn, but Levy said the Crown Prosecution Service believes the total sum involved was probably $2.3bn.
Adoboli’s lawyer did not request bail. He has not entered a plea but is not required to at this stage.
Magistrate Alison Gowman remanded Adoboli in custody until October 20 after the 10-minute hearing.
Adoboli, the son of a Ghanaian former UN official, worked for UBS’s global synthetic equities division in the City of London financial district.
He bought and sold exchange traded funds, which track different types of stocks or commodities.
He was arrested at UBS’s London offices in the early hours of September 15.
Within hours, the bank announced it had lost $2bn through unauthorised trading, but later raised the estimated losses to $2.3bn.
