Chinese 'Nick Leeson' rogue trader sentenced to death after £10m fund scam
A Chinese rogue trader who 'cheated' investors on her way to losing £10m in gold trading has been sentenced to death today.
The 30-year-old Wang Caipang was handed the sentence by a court in Wenzhou in east China after she borrowed the cash between January and October 2010.
Caiping, who must first serve two years in prison, borrowed huge sums of money promising to buy equipment, invest in property and open credit guarantee firms, but instead used the cash to speculate in futures and gold trading along with her elder brother, Wang Guanglin, who is still at large.
Unauthorised trading: Chinese woman Wang Caipang speculated in gold trading - blowing more than £10m
The downfall of the rogue trader is similar to the fate of British broker Nick Leeson, whose fraudulent, speculative trading infamously caused the collapse of Barings Bank.
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By the end of 1992 the account's losses exceeded £2m, which ballooned to £208m by the end of 1994, when he was arrested.
Rogue trader: Former broker Nick Leeson infamously brought down Britain's Barings Bank in the mid 1990s
He was later sentenced to six and a half years in Changi Prison in Singapore.
Caipang experienced heavy losses too, including £3m in September 2010 alone, as she tried to negotiate with some of her creditors in November 2010.
But they turned her over to police after the meeting broke up.
According to reports in China she said the 15 people had voluntarily given her money in return for handsome interest payments.
One of Wang's defense lawyers said the futures investment activities were legal and criminal charges against her were unfounded.
But the intermediary court of Wenzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province, ruled that Wang had committed the 'crime of fraud of financing' and sentenced to death for the huge sum of money involved.
She was sentenced just days after Beijing launched a pilot program in Wenzhou to tame the informal private lending market to which the city's renowned entrepreneurs often turn.
China's supreme court is believed to be reviewing another fund-raising case by a woman named Wu Ying, who was sentenced to death by a local court for 'illegally raising' aroudn £79m in funds.
In China, a sentence of jail time then death usually means the punishment will be reduced to life in prison.
Infamous: Ewan McGregor famously played the part of Nick Leeson in an adaptation of his infamous trading in Rogue Trader
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