SHIRLINA Tsang, a former Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc trader has been sentenced to 50 months in jail for pleading guilty of fraud. Tsang, 43 tried to hide losses of 19.5 million pounds.
“This is an extremely serious offense,” District Court Judge Garry Tallentire said as he handed down the sentence today. “Your acts led to enormous losses by RBS.”
Tsang, 43, had admitted to creating false records of her bond trading from mid-2010 until Oct. 14, 2011 to make it appear she was generating profit at the Edinburgh-based bank.
Tsang’s lawyer Edwin Choy had argued a plea for leniency as she cited similar offences which had varying punishments. Nick Leeson, who covered up losses of more than 800 million pounds at Barings Plc, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years prison in Singapore in 1995 while Jerome Kerviel, received a three-year jail term and was ordered to repay Societe Generale SA (GLE)’s 4.9 billion-euro loss in 2010. Tallentire said that these cases took place in different times, conditions and jurisdictions, and therefore should not be compared to.
“Financial services offenses are being treated with increasing severity,” said Denis Brock, a litigation partner at King & Wood Mallesons. “This might suggest a trend that whilst individuals were, in the past, less familiar with the opprobrium which such offenses generated, there is no longer any excuse,” he said.
