Prosecution dismisses ‘ridiculous’ Adoboli defence

Prosecution dismisses 'ridiculous' Adoboli defence

Kweku Adoboli

The prosecution in the trial of Kweku Adoboli told a London court today – as it began delivering its closing statement – that “the finger of blame” for last year’s $2.3bn trading loss at UBS “pointed directly” to the former trader.

Sasha Wass QC this morning began her closing speech on behalf of the prosecution in the criminal case against Adoboli, who faces two counts of fraud and four of false accounting. Adoboli has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges in the case, which began in September at London’s Southwark Crown Court and is in its 36th day.

Wass described Adoboli’s defence as “ridiculous”.

She said the losses were not accidental but “the result of planned, purposeful, intentional, unhedged trades”. Wass told the jury this morning: “By his own admission, Mr Adoboli had been deceiving the bank since 2008.”

She added: “By September 2011, Mr Adoboli had been lying and cheating the system for nearly three years.”

Wass told the court there had been no evidence heard of any other traders at UBS using a system similar to that allegedly used by Adoboli to conduct and conceal his trades: “All we have is unsupported smears to make it sound like UBS was replete with rogue traders.”

Adoboli had told the court during his evidence earlier in the trial that in his initial accounts to UBS staff, including an email to a back-office accountant purportedly outlining his trading actions on September 14 last year, he said he had acted without others’ knowledge, as he had wanted to take responsibility for the losses and shield others at the bank from blame.

Wass, however, told the court today: “This was no heroic act by Mr Adoboli. He was well and truly nailed by the evidence.”

She described the email as “quite extraordinary”, saying it told the “untarnished truth”, and telling the jury that in the message Adoboli “doesn’t seek to pass blame onto anything else as Mr Adoboli knew there were no defences”.

Wass branded Adoboli’s claim that others at the bank including his colleagues on the ETF desk and management figures knew what he was doing as “fantastical”.

“Why send the bombshell email if the bank knew what was going on, why have all those people in the back office?” Wass asked the court.

She said Adoboli’s defence team claim he was not acting dishonestly, adding: “He hid what he was doing from the bank. This concealment is the clearest evidence of dishonesty. If the bank had known, he wouldn’t have needed to hide the exposure.”