| Kareem Serageldin | |
| Birth Place: | Cairo, Egypt |
| Known For: | The only banker in the United States to serve jail time as a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 |
| Education: | Yale University (1994) |
Kareem Serageldin (born in 1973) is a former executive at Credit Suisse. He is notable for being the only banker in the United States to be sentenced to jail time as a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, a conviction resulting from mismarking bond prices to hide losses.[1] [2]
Serageldin was born in Cairo, Egypt to parents of modest means. He spent some of his childhood in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States.[3] [2] He graduated from Yale University in 1994.[4]
Upon graduating in 1994, he joined the information technology department ofCredit Suisse.[2] He moved to London 4 years later to work in the bank's catastrophe bonds business.[2] [3] By age 33, he was named the global head of structured credit.[5] By 2007, he was supervising 70 employees and more than $50 billion in trading positions.[3] Despite earning approximately $7 million per year, Serageldin lived modestly; his apartment overlooking London Victoria station was described by his friends as "a grown-up dorm room".[2]
By early 2008, he was fired from Credit Suisse and was reported to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York for falsifying records.[2]
On February 1, 2012, Serageldin was charged by Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation[6] as well as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.[7]
On April 12, 2013, Serageldin pleaded guilty to fraudulently inflating the prices of asset-backed bonds which comprised subprime residential mortgage backed securities and commercial mortgage backed securities in Credit Suisse's trading book in late 2007 and early 2008.[8]
On November 22, 2013, Judge Alvin Hellerstein sentenced Serageldin to 30 months in prison.[9] [3] Serageldin also agreed to return $25.6 million in compensation to Credit Suisse.[3]
On January 21, 2014, Serageldin was ordered to pay more than $1 million to settle the lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He was also effectively barred from the securities industry.[3] [10]
Serageldin said he committed the crime "To preserve my reputation in the bank at a time when there was great financial turmoil".[8]
He served at the Moshannon Valley Correctional Center[1] and was released in March 2016.[11]