An Indian-origin banker living in Singapore has been charged for forgery and cheating and sentenced to 13 years in jail on Thursday.
Kale Jagdish Purushottam (43) pleaded guilty to 20 forgery and cheating charges, 30 charges under the Computer Misuse Act in siphoning off US$10 million. There were more than 500 other charges taken into account during the trial.
Between June 2010 and January 2013, Kale had stolen amounts totaling US$10 million from accounts in Barclays Bank customers. Kale had then forged signatures to pay the money back to clients from his current clients, reports PTI.
This was not his only offense. Reports claim that Kale was employed at UBS Singapore where he was the relationship manager for Red Oak. During his tenure, he made many unauthorized transactions from the company's account.
Explaining how Kale had managed to forge documents and move the documents around, the Deputy Public Prosecutor, Ng Jean Ting, said that he had forged the documents by copying authorized signatures onto the forged papers. He kept doing it to cover up 81 unauthorised transactions.
In addition to this, Kale had also opened accounts in his clients' names to avail loans. The loans would then be transferred to the Red Oak accounts. Kale would also use other unauthorized transactions to cover up the loan sums.
"To cover up the loss of his clients, Kale tried to make money through unauthorised stock and foreign exchange transactions using his clients' accounts," Ting said.
She added, "However, the unauthorised trades and other transactions caused further net losses of at least US$10 million to Barclays."
However, Kale's defense attorney, Anand Nalachandran, said that he did this thinking that it was an obligation to clients and the transactions were not for personal financial benefit. "Having just moved to Barclays, he was faced with allegations (from Red Oak), and instead of heeding advice, he rather rashly acted and then did these things to satisfy his obligation."
Kale had agreed to pay Red Oak the money he had taken. However, he had paid this money with the funds he had siphoned off from the accounts in Barclays.
