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What a scaredy cat!
A former high-flying banker accused of covering up losses in his toxic mortgage portfolio to boost his bonus, said yesterday he didn’t want to face the legal music in New York and will fight extradition from the UK.
The Egypt-born banker, Kareem Seregeldin, who lives in England, said through his lawyer that he is even willing to give up his US citizenship to arrange a plea deal and serve his time in the UK.
Serageldin, the former global head of Credit Suisse’s CDO business, faces 45 years in prison on conspiracy, falsification of books and wire fraud charges filed in Manhattan federal court.
Serageldin, who attended Yale and whose mother taught at Duke, was charged in February with hiding losses in a $3.5 billion bond portfolio in hopes of scoring a generous bonus.
The alleged cover-up scheme forced Credit Suisse to report an unexpected $2.65 billion write-down in its 2007 results, prosecutors said.
Since the February indictment, Serageldin has been hiding in London while trying to negotiate a plea deal.
Serageldin, fired from Credit Suisse in 2008, is the highest-ranking executive to be charged for crimes tied to the financial crisis.
As the head of the bank’s worldwide structured credit trading division, he traveled between London and New York and kept an apartment in Manhattan’s tony Kips Bay neighborhood.
Serageldin, arrested this week outside the US embassy in London, was freed on $242,000 bail after telling London’s Westminster Magistrates Court that his arrest was all part of a big misunderstanding.
The disgraced banker surrendered his US citizenship in hopes of serving out whatever prison sentence he might face in the UK, one of his lawyers said, according to Reuters.
“The Department of Justice has oddly taken the view that his revocation of US citizenship was somehow in anticipation of fleeing this jurisdiction,” the lawyer, Ben Brandon, said.
An extradition hearing in the UK was set for Nov. 28. In the meantime, Serageldin will be forced to wear a monitoring device.
“I would bet the US Attorney’s Office is not too happy with that,” said Kenneth Springer, a former FBI agent, referring to the bail.
“He’s probably desperate because if he gets back here, his goose is cooked,” said Springer, of investigative firm Corporate Resolutions Inc.
Sean Casey, a Manhattan-based lawyer for Serageldin, didn’t return a call for comment. A spokeswoman for US Attorney Preet Bharara declined to comment.
At the time of the alleged fraud, Serageldin was in charge of a $3.5 billion mortgage-bond portfolio backed by toxic mortgages, which boasted high ratings despite the poor quality of the mortgages.
When cracks in the mortgages started to show, Serageldin allegedly instructed his underlings to inflate the prices, prosecutors said.