Alleged UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli has been released on bail – in a McDonald’s car park.
Mr Adoboli, who is accused of unathorised deals the cost the Swiss bank $2.3bn (£1.5bn), was driven in a Wandsworth Prison van to the nearby fast-food restaurant, where he met his lawyers.
As part of his bail conditions, the former trader who used to live in a $1,500-a-week apartment near UBS’s London office will have to live at a friend’s house under curfew and will be tagged Mr Adoboli was granted bail on Friday, after an earlier application was rejected in February.
“He is delighted, hugely grateful to the judge and to his friends and family. It was a very emotional scene,” lawyer Tim Harris, who is acting for Adoboli, told reporters after that hearing. The trial of the former UBS employee, who denies fraud and false accounting, is due to start on September 3.
The stakes are high for Adoboli, who faces a jail sentence of up to 10 years if convicted, but they are also high for UBS, which will face searching questions about its management.
The Adoboli case forced the Swiss bank into a management shake-up culminating in the departure of its chief executive, Oswald Gruebel. Several top equities bankers have also left and the bank’s chief risk officer has been replaced.
UBS has blamed the huge loss on an unauthorised trading incident, but Mr Adoboli’s defence team is expected to argue that others on the trading desk where he worked had been doing similar things and managers knew about it.
Source: GhanaWeb
