Trader jailed over £152m NAB rogue deals

THE former head of currency trading at National Australia Bank, the country's largest and owner of the Clydesdale, was today jailed for 29 months for his part in a rogue-trading scandal that cost the lender A$360m (£152m).

Luke Edward Duffy, 35, pleaded guilty in Melbourne Magistrates Court in March to three charges over the scandal, one of which was that he lied about the trading desk's performance to feather his nest with performance bonuses.

Duffy admitted falsifying foreign exchange records to the value of A$145m.

Fellow traders London-based Gianni Gray and Vincent Ficarra of Melbourne pleaded not guilty to 19 charges of dishonestly using their positions for gain and one criminal charge of deception. They will face a committal hearing on 1 August.

A fourth defendant, David Bullen, who faces the same 20 charges, reserved his plea and will stand trial two weeks later.

Bullen, a recent convert to Buddhism and increasingly known for his eccentricity as much as for his alleged part in the scandal, has said he would be 'happy as anything' to spend the next 20 years in jail.

NAB owns the Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks in Britain and is in the process of selling the National Irish and Northern banks to Denmark's Danske Bank for £967m.

In May, NAB announced that, following a review, 100 branches of the Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks would be closed. The banking giant unveiled details of 4,000 job cuts in Australia as part of a worldwide restructuring operation that would see one-fifth of its branch network close in the UK.