According to a Bloomberg report, the defense team of former UBS AG trader Kweku Adoboli is slated to ask an London-based appeals court today to grant an opportunity to argue for the dismissal of their client's conviction. Paul Lennon, a lawyer for Adoboli, had declined to provide comment on the hearing, but a tweet from the official Twitter account of the lawyer's firm, Bark & Co, confirmed that the application is set to be heard today.
Adoboli was convicted of two counts of fraud in 2012, which reportedly caused his former employer's London unit to lose $2.3 billion. Adoboli had insisted at the trial that his managers had pushed him to take too many risks and claimed that there is a culture of rule-breaking at the bank. Bloomberg noted that Adoboli had failed in his first attempt to dismiss his case in July 2013.
Just like the appeals court judge who rejected his request to hear his arguments against his conviction last year, the 10-member jury in his 2012 trial remained unconvinced that Adoboli was a mere victim of the company's culture and management. On the other hand, the jury acquitted him of false accounting charges.
When Judge Brian Keith sentenced him on November 20, 2012, he told the former trader, "Your fall from grace as a result of these convictions is spectacular. You are profoundly un-selfconscious of your own failings. You were arrogant enough to think that the bank's rules for traders didn't apply to you."
In the wake of the trading loss, at least 11 employees of the bank were either fired or have resigned, Bloomberg said. Among the employees who left UBS were former Chief Executive Officer Oswald Gruebel and the co-heads of global equities, Yassine Bouhara and Francois Gouws. Adoboli's coworkers on the ETF desk, John Hughes, Simon Taylor and Christophe Bertrand also departed from the bank, and so as his former managers Ron Greenidge and John DiBacco.
