1. How can the trader cause such a massive loss all by himself? I find it v. hard to believe. At the very least he had to convince the bank's Treasury Dept. to fund (send him money to carry out) his loss making trades over a long period of time (06-07). The Treasury people may not have deliberately helped him in the fraud, but no one noticed that a lot of money is being flushed down the toilet all this time??
2. The bank's chairman thought the trader's objective of the fraud was not for personal gain. What does he mean? That guy had obviously started by making a much smaller loss, and then tried to change his luck by making ever bigger bets and hoping that he got it right the next time. He didn't ever get things right. The objective was to get a big bonus, or at least keep his job. What other objective could there be?
3. Nick Leeson, the notorious ex-Barings trader, caused the equivalent of US$1.2Bn in trading losses by fraud and spent 4 yrs in prison in Singapore. This guy lost 6 times that amount (US$7.2Bn) and all that's happened to him was he got fired!!!?
