City expert stole £9m to gamble

AN accountant stole £9m from his City employers to fund an out-of-control gambling habit. Wing Kit Chu, 32, took the money from engineering firm Charter Plc over a five-year period.

He used colleagues' passwords to log on to company computers and authorise massive payments to his spread-betting account.

The Hong Kong-born finance expert frittered away the fortune gambling on future FTSE and Nasdaq stock exchange performance, becoming so obsessed he once withdrew almost half a million pounds in three days.

The £9m he stole between February 1999 and June this year was more than twice that taken by City secretary Joyti De-Laurey, jailed for seven years in July for stealing from her bosses.

At Southwark Crown Court, Wing, known to colleagues as David, admitted theft and was told he faced jail.

The court heard he was able to wire the funds directly from Charter - based in Grosvenor Street, Victoria - into his gambling account with City Index. He authorised sums ranging from £1,800 to £250,000 in his bosses' names.

But a losing run left the account in credit by only £800,000 when company investigators closed in. Described by colleagues as 'quiet, unassuming and polite', he vanished for three weeks after auditors started asking questions about the missing cash.

He wrote an internal email saying: 'I am sorry I have let you all down' before disappearing - eventually turning himself in at Belgravia police station early in September.

The finance expert and his wife moved into a £600,000 five-bedroom home in Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire, six weeks before his arrest.

Neighbours said the couple spent a fortune on renovation and expensive cars. One added: 'They were fairly new in the close, but very pleasant.'

Wing appeared in court to admit 28 theft counts and asked for 74 other offences to be taken into consideration. His lawyer Caroline English urged the judge to seek psychiatric reports before Wing's 'virtually inevitable' jail term.

'Bearing in mind the magnitude of the monies taken and the frequency of the transactions, it is clear this man's actions were completely out of control,' she said. Ms English called for an exploration of whether Wing suffered from what she called 'pathological gambling'.

But Judge James Wadsworth QC refused the request, ordering standard pre-sentence reports. 'I am satisfied on reading the papers that this is a man with a gambling compulsion,' he said. 'The court does require a pre-sentence report, but I make it plain to you that a custodial sentence is virtually inevitable.'

Wing was remanded in custody for sentence next month. Outside the court, case officer Detective Sergeant Richard Ward said: 'This was a very well planned series of thefts, and an incredible breach of trust. He betrayed both colleagues and the shareholders of Charter Plc.'