The former head of natural gas trading at the Bank of Montreal, David Lee, has pleaded guilty to inflating the value of his portfolio and conspiring with others to deceive the bank, federal prosecutors in New York said on Tuesday November 18.
The alleged confession came as Lee was charged by the US futures regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with the same allegations. Both the criminal and regulatory charges will be tried together.
The charges relate to losses of initially C$350m to C$450m revealed by the Bank of Montreal in May 2007. They were incurred in derivatives trading through natural gas movements on the New...