Kẻ lừa đảo khiến ngân hàng lâu đời nhất nước Anh phá sản

-----

At the age of 28, Nick Leeson brought down (hạ, bắn rơi) 233-year-old Barings - Britain's oldest merchant bank. It was where Queen Elizabeth did her banking, and had funded such milestones in history as the Napoleonic wars - but even that was not enough to save it from the $2.2 billion in losses racked up by the rogue (thằng đểu, thằng xỏ lá ba; kẻ lừa đảo) trader.

...But Leeson held both the positions of chief trader and head of settlements, which meant that he pretty much had free reign (vương quyền, uy quyền, thế lực, ảnh hưởng; sự chế ngự, sự ngự trị). And he used this to his advantage, concealing losses and unauthorised trades in a secret account called "error account 88888".

This account, which was meant to track bona fide trading mistakes and minor accounting discrepancies (chênh lệch), was found to have been used since 1992 to hide Leeson's losses and show artificial (nhân tạo) profits in other Barings trading accounts.

While Leeson looked to his peers to be a high-flying daredevil (người táo bạo, người liều lĩnh, người liều mạng, người không biết sợ là gì cả) trader, nothing was further from the truth.

By December 1994 and unknown to his bosses, he had racked up losses amounting to $373.9 million.

In an attempt to claw back some money, Leeson bet heavily against the Nikkei index falling below the 19,000 mark.

He believed that share prices, which plunged after the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit the city of Kobe on Jan 17, 1995, would rise.

But prices kept falling, and Leeson, whose gamble costs Barings $932 million, found himself in a deep hole of his own making.

That same month, alarm bells started ringing after auditors found a £50 million discrepancy.

Barings investigated, but by the time the deficit was discovered in mid-February 1995, the losses had increased to $2.2 billion, twice-exceeding the bank's capital and reserves.