Legal Expert Says Culture Change Must Come From The Top

Regulatory and criminal investigations specialists at Irwin Mitchell have said that although there are many reasons why fraudulent activity occurs in the banking profession, a profit-driven culture can take the focus away from limiting risk taking and make it harder to hold senior officials to account.

The warning comes after the London trader who lost the Swiss bank UBS £1.4bn claimed that banking is ‘still riven by conflicts of interests’.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, Kweku Adiboli apologised for his actions and said that ‘banking has not done enough to regain the public’s trust’ following the financial crash.

In 2012, the city trader was jailed for seven years after being found guilty of two counts of fraud after Southwark Crown Court heard that he was “a gamble or two away from destroying Switzerland’s largest bank”.

Since leaving prison last year, Kweku has been speaking for free at banking compliance conferences. When asked by the BBC if he felt behaviour had changed in banking he responded with a definitive ‘no’ before explaining that ‘the young people I've spoken to, former colleagues I have spoken to, are still struggling with the same issues, the same conflicts, the same pressures to achieve no matter what’.

Craig Weston, a regulatory and criminal investigatory group expert at Irwin Mitchell feels a number of proposed changes may help the industry but issues are likely to still occur.