17 Sep 2012

Trader had gambler's mindset, court told

1:02 pm on 17 September 2012

A former trader has gone on trial accused of the largest banking fraud in British history.

Kwaku Adoboli, 32, was arrested a year ago when huge losses at the Swiss bank UBS came to light.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud and false accounting, the BBC reports.

Opening its case, the prosecution told the court Mr Adoboli exceeded his trading limits in a bid to get a bigger bonus and invented fictitious deals to cover his tracks.

It said he had "gambled away" £1.4 billion of his firm's money and caused chaos and disaster.

Mr Adoboli had been working as a senior trader at UBS's global synthetic equities branch, buying and selling exchange traded funds, which track different types of stocks, bonds or commodities such as metals.

Prosecutor Sasha Wass QC said he had been "sucked into the gambler's mindset" and "started throwing good money after bad".