Quick Facts
Biography
Kareem Serageldin (/ˈsɛrəɡɛldɪn/) was an executive at Credit Suisse who was described by friends as an “investment-banking monk.”
Finance fraud
As of April 30, 2014, Serageldin was the “only Wall Street executive prosecuted as a result of the financial crisis” that triggered the Great Recession. On Friday, November 22, 2013, Serageldin—the former Managing Director/Global Head of Structured Credit in the Investment Banking Division of Credit Suisse Group—was sentenced to 30 months in prison in connection with a scheme to hide more than $1 billion in losses in a mortgage-backed securities trading book at Credit Suisse. Serageldin also agreed to give back $25.6 million in compensation to Credit Suisse, and was later ordered to pay more than $1 million to settle an SEC lawsuit.
Serageldin pleaded guilty to "fraudulently inflating the prices of asset-backed bonds which comprised subprime residential mortgage backed securities (“RMBS”) and commercial mortgage backed securities (“CMBS”) in Credit Suisse’s trading book in late 2007 and early 2008." The "alleged manipulation of these bond prices contributed to Credit Suisse taking a $2.65 billion write-down of its 2007 year-end financial results."
As to the question of why the Justice Department has thus far failed to more vigorously pursue criminal cases against financial executives, one analyst asserted that the department “effectively lost its ability to indict corporations or go after individuals at the highest echelons of corporate America.”