UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli accuses colleagues of lying

The trial of alleged rogue trader Kweku Adoboli continued at Southwark Crown Court today and Mr Adoboli accused his former colleagues of lying at his trial because they were frightened of a powerful banking "machine".

Mr Adoboli, under cross-examination from prosecuting counsel Sasha Wass said that the only reason he was in court today was because he made losses not profits.

Sasha Wass accused Mr Adoboli of treating UBS like his own personal bank and said that none of the witnesses who worked for UBS had supported his version of events.

Mr Adoboli responded by saying: "Every single witness who has stood on this stand has lied. "You've seen the size of the machine. You've seen all these people. They're all here just to find me guilty."

Yesterday, the court heard how Mr Adoboli described himself as “losing control” of his actions when he was under pressure from senior managers to improve performance at the height of the financial crisis.

Mr Adoboli, 32, from Whitechapel, East London, is accused of gambling away £1.4 billion while working for Swiss bank UBS in London. He faces two charges of fraud and four charges of false accounting.

Mr Adoboli insisted that he never acted dishonestly and he attacked the culture of investment banks that made traders have to bend the rules to meet targets set by senior management.

He worked for UBS’s global synthetic equities division, buying and selling exchange traded funds (ETFs) which are linked to the performance of bonds and commodities.

The losses piled up as he failed to hedge his positions and set up an “umbrella” fund for off-book trades.

Mr Adoboli told the court he was put under pressure by senior managers to change his position from a conservative stance to a more aggressive posture to try and regain losses.

He said that senior managers were fully aware of what he was doing and encouraged him to push hard for profit.

He said that he began to make very large losses when European shares suffered a big drop in the summer of 2011.

"The real problem was a result of the pressure to flip my position from short to long, this broke my control.

"I absolutely lost control, I was no longer in control of the decisions around the trades we were doing."

Mr Adoboli told the court that his bosses encouraged him to push the boundaries.

"There were no secrets, there was no hiding, there was no holding back.

"We were told to push the boundaries, so we pushed the boundaries.

"We were told you wouldn't know where the limit of the boundary was until you got a slap on the back of the wrist.

"We found that boundary, we found the edge, we fell off and I got arrested."

Mr Adoboli said he thought of UBS as his family and that he was devastated to have to tell the court negative things about the bank.

He said: "I'm devastated to have put UBS in that position. I'm devastated that my friends lost their jobs. I'm devastated that in order to tell the world who I am I have to tell things about my organization that they wouldn't want me to.

"But in the end the reason I'm most sad is because the losses weren't the result of dishonesty or fraudulent behavior, they were the result of a group of traders asked to do too much with too little resources."

Mr Adoboli also explained the impact the pressure he felt under had on his relationship with his girlfriend.

He said that one evening when they were supposed to go out for dinner he became very upset and when his girlfriend asked him what was wrong he said he couldn’t explain and curled up in a fetal position and she walked out on him.

His girlfriend later advised him to seek help and talk to someone to fix the problem. Soon after this incident, Mr Adoboli realised he would have to admit to is bosses the situation his trades were in.

The trial continues today and Mr Adoboli will be questioned by the prosecuting counsel.

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