Trader charged with 3 counts in $2B loss

LONDON, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Charges filed against an alleged rogue UBS trader in London revealed that his unauthorized bets, which recently lost $2 billion, may have begun in 2008.

Kweku Adoboli was charged with two counts of false accounting and one count of fraud, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Adoboli appeared for 30 minutes at the City of London Magistrates' Court, but did not enter a plea, the newspaper said.

Adoboli worked in at a small trading desk at UBS that dealt with exchange-traded funds, a securities package that trade like stocks, but are often linked to an index tied to industry. A population index, for example, may indicate future demand for food or fuel and the securities are packaged to represent businesses in agriculture or oil exploration, as the case may be.

Court papers say Adoboli first falsified trading documents in October 2008 and did so again in September 2011. The fraud charge covers activities between January and September of this year, the Journal said.

The date of the alleged activities could reflect poorly on the Swiss bank, which increased scrutiny of its in-house risk management division after major losses suffered in the mortgage market at the start of the financial crisis.

Another red flag was provided for the industry by a Societe Generale trader named Jerome Kerviel, who was discovered in 2008 to have lost $7.2 billion in unauthorized trades.