Seymour Pierce Fined For Failing To Prevent 3-Year Accounting Fraud

Tue, 13 Oct 2009

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined London-based investment bank Seymour Pierce over £150,000 for failing to identify accounting fraud carried out by a former employee.

The watchdog said weak compliance controls allowed a broker to steal around £150,000 "completely undetected" from the bank’s internal and private client accounts over a period of three years.

The thefts, which involved 36 separate transactions, were only discovered after the employee had been dismissed for a separate breach of conduct and his replacement spotted serious accounting irregularities.

Margaret Cole, director of enforcement and financial crime at the FSA, said: "This is a serious failure on Seymour Pierce's part. The frauds were not sophisticated and could have been detected at a much earlier stage if the proper procedures had been in place."

" Fraud seriously undermines the integrity of our markets, so this fine is a timely reminder of the consequences for firms that fail to have robust systems and controls to prevent unlawful transactions of this sort."

Seymour Pierce agreed to settle at an early stage of the FSA investigation, which meant it qualified for a 30 per cent discount, taking the fine from £220,000 to £154,000.

Managing director Richard Feigen said: "Our firm has been the victim of a serious crime. We discovered it, reported it and we have taken appropriate action to prevent even a determined thief from circumventing our controls again, whilst protecting our clients."

"Today's settlement brings this long-running matter to a close but the lessons we have learned will make us an even stronger business in future."
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.