Trader at centre of missing millions in hiding from media
John Rusnak, the trader at the centre of the scandal over the $750m (€866m) missing from a subsidiary of Allied Irish Bank, was today in hiding, away from the glare of the world’s media.
The 37-year-old foreign currency trader is understood to have spoken to American prosecutors in Baltimore where Allfirst, the bank where he worked, is based.
The married father-of-two stunned neighbours and colleagues when he failed to show up for work on Monday, and was yesterday alleged to have defrauded the massive sum from the bank, one of America’s oldest.
But today it was disclosed that the multi-million dollar deals were in contrast to the banker’s relatively frugal lifestyle.
Margery Pozessky, who served with Mr Rusnak on the board of an educational charity close to his home, said how the banker never seemed to have the money to make donations to charity.
’’He seemed like a nice guy but he was always distracted by work,’’ she said. ‘‘At least I assumed it was work. He kept volunteering to solicit contributions from people in the banking industry but he never really came through.
‘‘I always got the feeling that he didn’t really have the connections to people that high up.’’
Rusnak’s next-door neighbour, Christopher O’Neill, also said his family had swapped baby clothes with the Rusnaks, whose two young children attend a nearby school.
Carol Brody, a friend who visited the family’s home recently, said: ‘‘They certainly aren’t flashy people. They didn’t have any expensive or extravagant things, or live any kind of expensive lifestyle.’’
Samuel Dell, the previous owner of the 119-year-old Victorian house in the Baltimore suburbs which Mr Rusnak bought for $135,000 (€156,000) said the man had been ‘‘a bargainer’’ who had haggled over the price.
Experts in America said it seemed likely that Mr Rusnak had made a string of errors while trading currencies, by betting that the Japanese yen would rise in value against the euro and the dollar.
A senior trader said: ‘‘If you were short dollars or short euro and long yen, you would have been killed over the last six months or so.’’
Traders in America said they were delaying reacting to the fraud until they knew more about how it happened and the effect it would have on AIB.
Scott Schultz, of Brown Brothers Harriman in New York, said: ‘‘Traders are trying to uncover more information about what positions he had before they start to react.’’
The Wall Street Journal, America’s business newspaper, said the massive loss had escaped auditors, raising more questions about the state of accountancy.
‘‘Coming after the Enron collapse in the US, Allied’s problems once again raise serious questions about how such a major loss could have eluded the attention of officers and auditors at such a large company.’’
Reaction to the alleged fraud was muted in the United States, although it dominated local news in Baltimore.
The Wall Street Journal relegated the loss to its inner pages, while other national newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Post, dealt with it on their business pages alone.
As workers arrived at Allfirst’s multi-storey headquarters building in Baltimore there was optimism it would not be affected by Mr Rusnak’s losses.
One employee said: ‘‘A lot of people are thinking in a sky-is-falling mentality. It is an inaccurate one.’’
