Rogue trader Rusnak receives prison sentence

John Rusnak, the former Allied Irish Banks (AIB) trader responsible for $691 million in fraudulent losses related to yen-dollar currency forwards, has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

Rusnak pleaded guilty last year to hiding the trading losses. In 1997 he began trading based upon the assumption that the value of the yen would strengthen against the dollar. When the yen’s relative value continued to slide, so too did Rusnak’s forwards positions.

He managed to convince the back office at Allfirst Financial, AIB’s Baltimore-based subsidiary, that as there was no net cash position on the trades, they did not need to be confirmed.

“We maintained from the beginning that we were the victim of a complex and serious fraud, and today’s sentence has endorsed that,” said a spokesman for AIB.

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