The Italian police have frozen EUR1.8 billion (US$2.37 billion) of assets of the Japanese investment bank Nomura, as part of a widening criminal investigation into alleged financial malpractice at Monte dei Paschi di Siena.
Prosecutors said they had also put Sadeq Sayeed, former chief executive of Nomura Europe, and Raffaele Ricci, an executive at the bank, under investigation for allegedly obstructing judicial investigations and a possible violation of market rules when they were executives at Nomura.
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The move by the Siena prosecutors is the latest occuring in an escalating saga that analysts say may push the Italian state to nationalise Italy’s third-largest bank by assets and reputedly the world’s oldest.
Prosecutors allege that the bank undertook a series of derivatives transactions in order to hide tens of millions of losses from that deal from shareholders as well as subsequent losses on ill-timed investments in Italian sovereign debt.
The operation was undertaken in Siena, Rome, Milan, Bologna and the southern Italian town of Catanzaro.
Monte dei Paschi’s new management, led by Alessandro Profumo, is also suing Nomura and Deutsche Bank to try to recoup losses on two derivatives deals. Both banks contest the claims.
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By GlobalDataShares in Monte Paschi have tumbled again since it revealed at Easter that it had lost "several billions" of euros in February as customers pulled their deposits.
