Adoboli plea will complicate trial, say lawyers

'Not guilty' plea could be stalling tactic or attempt to spread guilt, lawyers say

Kweku Adoboli's 'not guilty' plea could be a bid to slow down the trial or an attempt to share the blame for the $2.3 billion losses Swiss bank UBS suffered in September 2011, according to legal experts.

"Most likely what he's trying to do by pleading not guilty is get the chance to bring evidence that points out there's some sort of shared responsibility here," says Dominic Auld, securities litigation expert at US law firm Labaton Sucharow. "A ‘not guilty' plea is probably an attempt on his part to share guilt."

Adoboli's plea means that at his trial, scheduled for September, his lawyers are likely to bring forward evidence that suggests he wasn't solely responsible for the large losses.

"If it turns out, for example, that Adoboli had a supervisor that approved everything he did, then maybe there will be another person on the hook," says Auld.

Tony Woodcock, litigation partner at UK law firm Stephenson Harwood, agrees the 'not guilty' plea gives Adoboli the chance to raise questions about UBS to help his case. "The plea gives him the ability to cause as much trouble as possible for UBS," he says. "He might want to bring pressure on the authorities to reduce the charges against him by making things complicated."

But Woodcock is not convinced this is an attempt by Adoboli to share his guilt. "It could mean a raft of things," he says. "Sometimes it's a case of a dishonest person just not being able to admit he's dishonest, sometimes it's a tactic to string the case out or to exert pressure to gain a lesser plea."

Woodcock also points out that Adoboli has changed his defence team since being charged – and, as he has been in custody, he has been unable to have daily meetings with his solicitors. Combined with the fact that this is a complicated case, it might mean the defence has simply not yet had an opportunity to give him proper advice on his plea.

"They might just not be ready to decide what the plea is," he says. "They've managed to hold off a little bit but the courts are under obligation these days to take a plea as soon as they possibly can, so it might just be a holding plea. Once he pleads guilty it's almost impossible to undo it. I rather suspect this might be the real reason for the 'not guilty' plea."

Auld adds that the resignations of top UBS executives over the past few months in the wake of the losses might also make Adoboli's defence easier – and help spread the guilt to the rest of the bank. Chief executive Oswald Grubel resigned shortly after the losses were discovered, and in October 2011 Yassine Bouhara and Francois Gouws, co-heads of UBS investment bank's global equities division, left the bank, along with one of the division's two chief operating officers, Niraj Gudka. Chief risk officer (CRO) Maureen Miskovic stepped down in December 2011.

"There's no question that when your CRO goes, it doesn't look good," he says. "Seeing the departure of the CRO, chief executive and various others at the top – it just doesn't look good. There's nothing that can help them there, it can only hurt them."