Ex-UBS Officer on Trial Over Leaks Was Tasked With Stopping Them

Nov 05 2018, 1:58 PMNov 05 2018, 2:22 PMNovember 05 2018, 1:58 PMNovember 05 2018, 2:22 PM

(Bloomberg) -- A former UBS Group AG compliance officer, on trial for insider trading, led a project designed to stop leaks, her boss told a London jury.

Fabiana Abdel-Malek, 36, was in charge of a project limiting what access bank-support staff had to information that could affect a company’s share price or was confidential, her one-time manager, Sai Jawanmardi, said Monday. Abdel-Malek’s knowledge of bank transactions, confidentiality and price-sensitive information was "very strong," she said.

Jawanmardi is the Financial Conduct Authority’s first witness who knew Abdel-Malek at the time she allegedly leaked confidential information about deals to Walid Choucair, a day trader she was friends with. The two were charged with insider trading between June 2013 and June 2014, in connection with five deals UBS worked on.

Abdel-Malek joined UBS’s compliance team as a graduate in 2007 and rose several ranks, before she was arrested in September 2015. Her job was to provide regulatory and reputational advice to bankers involved in financing and lending transactions, according to Jawanmardi, who managed six compliance officers.

The prosecution claims Abdel-Malek accessed UBS’s internal compliance database and used pay-as-you-go SIM cards to leak information on deals she was not involved in. The pair deny the charges, saying that while they knew each other, Choucair got his trading tips from other contacts.