Nick Leeson convicted
Saturday, 2nd December 1995
Nick Leeson, whose huge trading losses brought down Barings, Britains oldest Merchant bank, was sentenced to 6 years jail. Senior District Judge Richard Magnus said the 28-year-old Briton has spun a web of deceit to cheat the auditors of the company Coopers & Lybrand and the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX). He backdated the sentence to March 2 this year, when Leeson was arrested in Frankfurt after he fled Singapore. Leeson had pleaded guilty to two charges of cheating. The charges said he invented a fake option to cover a 7.78 billion yen ($115 million) debt that he had incurred in trading losses. Total futures trading losses amounted to about $2.2 billion. Nine other charges were taken into consideration.