Ex-RBS Bond Trader Gets 50 Months in Hong Kong Jail for Fraud in trying to hide losses of 19.5 million pounds ($30.8 million)

September 13, 2013 Leave a comment

Ex-RBS Trader Gets 50 Months in Hong Kong Jail for Fraud

Shirlina Tsang, a former Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) trader who pleaded guilty in Hong Kong to fraud for trying to hide losses of 19.5 million pounds ($30.8 million), was sentenced to 50 months in jail. Tsang, 43, created 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, according to the prosecution’s charge sheet. RBS said it discovered the fraud two years ago after an internal review, notified the authorities and fired her.

“This is an extremely serious offense,” District Court Judge Garry Tallentire said today. Tsang could’ve been jailed for as long as seven years.

Tsang was remorseful, admitted her mistake to RBS and repaid the bank her bonus, her lawyer Edwin Choy told the judge today. Tsang’s “colossal misjudgment” was due to work stress and depression caused by her brother’s death, he said in his mitigation plea.

Anita Chow, another of Tsang’s lawyers, declined to comment on her sentence after the hearing.

“RBS takes any matter of this nature very seriously,” said Yuk Min Hui, a spokeswoman for the bank in Hong Kong. “We have been cooperating fully with all relevant authorities.”

RBS, Britain’s biggest publicly owned lender after a record 45.5 billion pound bailout in 2008, reported net income of 535 million pounds in the first half, compared with a 2 billion-pound loss in the year earlier period.

The case is Hong Kong SAR v Tsang Pui-Yu, Shirlina, DCCC326/2013, Hong Kong District Court.

To contact the reporter on this story: Douglas Wong in Hong Kong at dwong19@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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