Barings Trader Leeson Seeks British Indictment : Banking: Extradition to London would keep him away from Singapore and possible prison term.

Nicholas W. Leeson’s lawyers want Britain to indict the former Barings trader blamed for the bank’s collapse.

It’s an unusual strategy, they admit.

“But it’s an unusual case,” attorney Eberhard Kempf said Wednesday.

Extradition to Britain would get Leeson what he wanted when he was arrested March 2 at the Frankfurt airport en route from Malaysia: his return home to London and away from Singapore, where he could face up to seven years in prison.

In exchange, Leeson’s lawyers suggested, he might give British authorities information on the role London executives played in Barings’ demise.

Singapore wants Leeson, the former head of the bank’s futures trading business there, on charges that he forged documents showing he had money to pay for his high-stakes gamble that Tokyo’s stock market would rise.

Instead the market fell, costing Barings $1.4 billion, destroying the 233-year-old bank and stunning world stock markets. The Dutch banking and insurance company ING Group took over Barings on Monday.

Kempf acknowledged he has few good arguments to keep Leeson from being sent back to Singapore.

British authorities haven’t said whether they will charge Leeson.

“If there were an extradition request from Britain, it would open up all sorts of possibilities,” said Stephen Pollard, a British lawyer who visited Leeson in prison. “Leeson has given us some very interesting things on what was going on in the bank until February.”

German authorities could choose to grant a British request instead of Singapore’s, said Frankfurt prosecutor Hans-Hermann Eckert.

Leeson’s lawyers also denied that he acted for personal gain when he bet that the Tokyo market’s Nikkei-225 stock market index would rise.

“All he did, he did as an employee of Barings and in the interest of the bank,” Pollard said.

But the lawyers wouldn’t say whether Leeson denies Singapore’s charges that he forged a Wall Street executive’s signature on a letter authorizing the trading and a document showing Barings had his firm’s money.

Leeson’s lawyers contend he and his wife, Lisa, were merely going on vacation, not into hiding, when they left Singapore on Feb. 23 for Malaysia, a day before the huge trading losses became public.

They traveled on their own passports, booked tickets in their names and carried only vacation luggage.

“They left Singapore knowing there’s a problem in the bank, that his trading was not successful,” Pollard said. “That’s why he sent a letter of resignation. He expected to get sacked.”

However, two London newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, reported that Lisa Leeson contacted a Singapore moving company Feb. 15 to have their household goods shipped to Britain.