AFP wrote:
A London lawyer was found guilty Tuesday of conning a Japanese bank where she was a senior manager out of millions of pounds (dollars), to help a friend's ailing airline.
Kate Johns, deputy head of Tokyo Mitsubishi's legal department, persuaded colleagues to ignore rules and approve huge money transfers in 2006 which ended up in the accounts of Indonesian carrier Air Efata.
In return the 39-year-old received some 1.95 million pounds in pay-offs, a large part of which was used to pay off the mortgage on a luxury home, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Some 40,000 pounds was spent on a pair of earrings to go with a 35,000-pound ring which the Indonesian airline's boss, Harvard Law graduate Frank Taira-Supit, had already bought her.
Johns, a 150,000-pounds-a-year lawyer from Camden, London, also used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle including shopping trips, personal grooming and breast surgery, the court heard.
But the deceit unravelled after the 58-year-old airline chief hanged himself following the collapse of his airline, which only had three planes. Johns was arrested in January last year.
"The bank has more assets than any bank in the world because it is careful who it lends to, but no checks at all were in place when the letters of credit were sent out," said prosecutor Elizabeth Marsh.
Johns denied the charges against her, but a jury convicted her of five offences of obtaining a total of 6.67 million pounds by deception, as well as acquiring criminal property worth 588,373 pounds. . . more
