A chain-smoking Croatian foreign exchange dealer with heart problems has become Eastern Europe's most notorious "rogue trader", breaking his bank with $100 million (€113 million) in losses run up undetected over four years.
Mr Eduard "Edo" Nodilo (50) is estimated by the Croatian central bank to have squandered $73-$103 million by speculation in currency trade since 1998, almost wiping out Rijecka Banka's one billion kuna ($118.9 million) capital. The losses - the biggest posted by a single trader in post-communist eastern Europe - have earned Mr Nodilo local comparison with Mr Nick Leeson, a British dealer whose speculations brought down Barings merchant bank in 1995.
Like Mr Leeson and this year's case of Mr John Rusnak at the US unit of AIB, which lost $691 million over five years, Mr Nodilo's motive seems not to have been personal gain but covering up past losses.
Croatia's central bank has pumped in 818 million kuna in emergency funding to keep Rijecka afloat. The government may face a steep bill to recapitalise the nation's third largest bank before it can sell it on.
The affair has already claimed a foreign victim, Bayerische Landesbank, which this week handed back to Croatia for $1 a 60 per cent stake in Rijecka which cost it $76 million. Mr Nodilo was regarded as an experienced and competent dealer.
- (Reuters)
