Jury retires to consider verdict in trial of ex-UBS trader Adoboli
THE jury in the London trial of former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, who is blamed for a loss of $2.3bn, retired yesterday to consider its verdicts.
Adoboli, 32, denies two charges of fraud by abuse of position and four charges of false accounting, covering the period from October 2008 to his arrest on 15 September 2011. His trial started on 10 September this year. There was no way of knowing how long the jury would take to reach verdicts on all six counts.
There are 11 jurors in the case, meaning that if they cannot reach a unanimous verdict on one or more counts, a 10-1 majority decision would be acceptable.
Adoboli is accused of carrying out unheeded trades far in excess of his authorised risk limits, concealing his true risk exposure by booking fictitious hedging trades, and concealing some of his profits so that he could plough them back into the official accounts when it suited him.
In order to convict him of the false accounting charges, the jurors have to be sure that he intended to make a personal gain for himself.