Kareem Serageldin () (born in 1973) is a former executive at

Credit Suisse Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world and is one of the nine global " ...

. 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 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...

, a conviction resulting from

mismarking Mismarking in securities valuation takes place when the value that is assigned to securities does not reflect what the securities are actually worth, due to intentional fraudulent mispricing. Mismarking misleads investors and fund executives about ...

bond prices to hide losses.

Early life and education

Serageldin was born in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

to parents of modest means. He moved to the United States as a child and spent most of his childhood in the

Upper Peninsula of Michigan The Upper Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. – is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula by t ...

. He graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1994.

Career

Upon graduating in 1994, he joined the

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

department of

. He moved to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

4 years later to work in the bank's

catastrophe bond Catastrophe bonds (also known as cat bonds) are risk-linked securities that transfer a specified set of risks from a sponsor to investors. They were created and first used in the mid-1990s in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew and the Northridge ...

s business. By age 33, he was named the global head of structured credit. By 2007, he was supervising 70 employees and more than $50 billion in trading positions. Despite earning approximately $7 million per year, Serageldin lived modestly; his apartment overlooking

London Victoria station Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster, managed by Network Rail. Named after the nearby Victoria Street (not the Qu ...

was described by his friends as "a grown-up

dorm room A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...

". By early 2008, he was fired from Credit Suisse and was reported to the

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is the chief federal law enforcement officer in eight New York counties: New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess and Sullivan. Establishe ...

for falsifying records.

Conviction

On February 1, 2012, Serageldin was charged by

Preet Bharara Preetinder Singh Bharara (; born October 13, 1968) is an Indian-born American lawyer, author, podcaster and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He is current ...

, the

, and the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

as well as the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...

. 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. On November 22, 2013, Judge

Alvin Hellerstein Alvin Kenneth Hellerstein (born December 28, 1933) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and has presided over several high-profile cases. Education and career Heller ...

sentenced Serageldin to 30 months in prison. Serageldin also agreed to return $25.6 million in compensation to Credit Suisse. On January 21, 2014, Serageldin was ordered to pay more than $1 million to settle the lawsuit by the

. He was also effectively barred from the securities industry. Serageldin said he committed the crime "To preserve my reputation in the bank at a time when there was great financial turmoil". He served at the

Moshannon Valley Correctional Center Moshannon Valley Correctional Center or Moshannon Valley Processing Center is an Immigration & Customs Enforcement building located in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, privately operated by the GEO Group under contract with the U.S. Immigration and Cus ...

and was released in March 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Serageldin, Kareem 1973 births Living people American bankers American people convicted of fraud Credit Suisse people Egyptian bankers Egyptian criminals Egyptian emigrants to the United States Finance fraud Great Recession Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government Yale University alumni

Early life and education

Career

Conviction

See also

References