‘Rogue Trader’ Leeson given six-year term for bringing down Barings Bank

This week in 1995, so-called ‘Rogue Trader’ Nick Leeson was jailed for six-and-a-half years for his part in the collapse of Britain’s oldest merchant bank. The 28-year-old pleaded guilty in Singapore two charges of fraud connected with Barings Bank’s £860m ruin.

Lesson was jailed for misreporting the status of around £300m in Barings contracts in February of 1995.

Judge Richard Magnus said Leeson had “spun a web of deceit” and created “a superficial reality designed to beguile” both Barings and the Singapore futures exchange.

He added that Leeson had used his position as general manager of Barings future tradings operations in Singapore to “trade his honesty and integrity”.

Leeson served less than four years of his sentence and wrote a book, Rogue Trader, which later became a film, starring Ewan McGregor as Leeson and Anna Friel as his wife, Lisa.

In other news this week, Sri Lankan troops drove the Tamil Tiger guerrillas out of their heartland capital of Jaffna after a 49-day operation.

Tamil attacks continued after the fall of Jaffna and a ceasefire was not signed until the 2002 peace talks in Norway, when the government and rebels agreed to share power.

But rising levels of violence brought an end to the truce in January 2008.

On home soil, a head teacher died after being stabbed outside his west London school while protecting a pupil who was being assaulted.

Paramedics performed emergency surgery on Philip Lawrence, 48, after he staggered into a classroom following the attack outside St George’s Roman Catholic School, Maida Vale.

He was rushed to St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, where surgeons lost their battle to save the father-of-four.

Learco Chindamo, 15 at the time of the attack, was found guilty of murdering Mr Lawrence at the Old Bailey in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment.