Punjabi faces 300-yr jail in US for fraud
Monday, 27/04/2015
http://www.indiapress.org/gen/news.php/The_Tribune/
London : A young Punjabi is facing more than 300 years in an American jail for “financial crimes”. Navinder Singh Sarao (36) is accused by US prosecutors of causing the 2010 Wall Street ‘flash crash’ that wiped $570 billion from the value of US companies.
London-based Sarao, who it is claimed made tens of millions of pounds from his actions as a stock market trader, lives opposite his parents in a humble house in the suburbs of Hounslow near the Heathrow International Airport. There is nothing ‘flash’ about his dwelling where he has registered his company, Nav Sarao Futures.
He currently faces 22 charges, including one count of wire fraud, 10 counts of commodities fraud and 10 counts of commodities manipulation.
It is alleged that Sarao used a computer programme to buy or sell stocks in vast quantities, but pulled out of the sale at the last minute. This is said to have played a key role in the US stock market’s biggest-ever one-day fall on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by almost 1,000 points.
Sarao is claimed to have profited from the manipulation — also known as ‘spoofing’ — by actually buying stock when the price was low. The resulting profits, as much as $40 million according to US prosecutors, have been stashed away in various Caribbean bank accounts.
The US authorities are now in the process of trying to extradite this British Sikh at a court hearing. Sarao said he would fight the extradition request. Among his former trading colleagues and friends, Sarao, a graduate of Brunel University, is known for his modest lifestyle. He does not even own his own car, but drives the car owned by his father, Nachattar Singh Sarao. Former colleagues have been quoted as saying he was so careful with money that he always travelled off peak, arriving at the office after 10 am, and preferred to wear cheap tracksuit trousers rather than a formal suit. So it came as a shock both to him and the British media when bail was set at £5 million.
Although painted as a super villain, rogue trader and the ‘Hound of Hounslow’ (perhaps in a nod to the ‘Wolf of the Wall Street’) senior stock market traders say they simply do not believe that one man alone could have caused so much mayhem in the stock market five years ago. Michael Spencer, Chief Executive of the ICAP, the world’s biggest broker, commented last week, “I find it very difficult to believe this chap in Hounslow caused or triggered a severe market crisis.
“How many others out there with much better computing power would have been doing the same thing if it was so easy.”
Sympathy has also come from other unnamed supporters who say it is grossly unfair that the bail conditions set at Westminster Magistrates Court also require members of his wider family to pay surety of £50,000 and surrender their passports.
