An ex Goldman Sachs trader who stole software from his employer has disobeyed a judge's order to turn over the stolen intellectual property so that he can profit from it upon his release, a London court heard
Xe Ku, a Cambrigde maths graduate, had worked as a quantitative analyst at Goldman Sachs writing trading strategies.
According to prosecutors, he used his computer know-how to illegally obtain algorithmic trading codes as well as software code from a former employer Trenchant Trading Systems.
Xu left Trenchant in August 2014, unhappy at only receiving a £400,000 bonus. He flew to Hong Kong taking confidential codes with him with the intention of selling them to rival firms. Instead he was arrested and extradited back to Britain where he was jailed seven months later.
He is currently serving a four year jail sentence but could face longer in jail if he fails to comply with the court order. Xu maintains that he never had possession of the codes after handing his computer to his family and then seeing it lost after the house was burgled.
The prosecution disagrees. "Mr Xu has tried to hang on to those secret trading strategies so they are there for him when he is released from prison and returns to China," James Lewis QC told the court. "Mr Xu was ordered to tell the police where the copies of Trenchant's trade secrets he made were and to hand those copies back and also to hand over the related computer equipment."
The case continues.