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FRANKFURT, Germany -- British trader Nick Leeson, blamed for bringing down Barings investment bank, must return to Singapore to face trial for fraud and forgery, a German court ruled Wednesday.
Singapore hailed the decision but Leeson's lawyers said they would fight to overturn it on constitutional grounds and save their client from facing justice in Asia.
"We will appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court," defense lawyer Eberhard Kempf told reporters. But Frankfurt prosecutor Hans-Hermann Eckert said he remained confident that Leeson would be sent back to Singapore sometime next year.
"The chances that he would not go to Singapore are very slight," Eckert said after the regional court ruled the former whiz-kid dealer whose Midas touch went sour could be extradited on 11 of 12 charges presented by Singapore.
Leeson could be jailed for up to 14 years if convicted.
Ironically, the one charge the court rejected was a forgery allegation Singapore authorities rushed to Germany to keep Leeson behind bars after he was detained in early March at Frankfurt airport.
Leeson's appeal and the legal requirement for the federal government
in Bonn to approve any extradition could delay for months Leeson's
return to the Asian city-state where
his daring trading in risky futures contracts once made him a legend.
Kempf said the supreme court could take from less than a month to nearly two years to rule on Leeson's appeal.
Singapore wants to put Leeson on trial for forgery and fraud charges related to his speculative derivatives trading, blamed for Barings' collapse under a $1.4 billion debt.
Leeson, 28, has been held at a suburban Frankfurt jail since his detention. He was not present when his defense lawyer announced the court's verdict.
Singapore's 800-page extradition request charges Leeson with manipulating trading records to siphon more than $1 billion of the bank's money to fund his ill-fated futures trading and then lying and forging to cover his trail.
The court dismissed the charge that Leeson had allegedly faked a copy of a letter from a Wall Street firm in a bid to cover up an $80 million transfer of funds to his own trading account.
The charges approved by the court include three other allegations of documents being falsified in connection with the $80 million transfer. Two further charges allege Leeson forged documents to order an internal transfer of about $900 million.
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