US federal authorities expect that one of the former JPMorgan Chase employees facing criminal charges in connection with the bank’s multibillion-dollar trading loss in London will eventually be extradited to the United States.
The former trader, Javier Martin-Artajo, is living in Spain and fighting extradition after surrendering to police in Spain in August.
“We have a good extradition agreement with Spain,” Lorin L. Reisner, the chief of the criminal division at the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, said on Tuesday. “I expect that Mr. Martin-Artajo will return to the U.S. via the extradition process.”
Another former trader charged in the case, Julien Grout, will probably prove more elusive, Mr. Reisner said. After leaving JPMorgan’s London offices, Mr. Grout returned to his native France, which typically does not extradite its citizens. “It’s more complicated,” Mr. Reisner said .
Mr. Reisner made his remarks at a conference on white-collar crime. The conference featured panels with leading government officials and criminal defense lawyers, as well as senior lawyers from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The white-collar crime conference coincided with the first day of the government shutdown. Mr. Reisner, the federal prosecutor, described the shutdown as a “complete mess” for his already resource-constrained office. With 10 criminal trials under way in Federal District Court in Manhattan, he is spending much of his time seeking to prevent the government paralegals from being furloughed.
The Justice Department is in settlement talks with JPMorgan and is seeking more than $11 billion from the bank over its sale of questionable mortgage securities.
The investigation into JPMorgan’s trading loss in London reached a peak in August when the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, along with the F.B.I., announced charges against the two.
Both Mr. Martino-Artajo and Mr. Grout deny wrongdoing. Bruno Iksil, a third former trader, known as the “London Whale”, reached a nonprosecution deal with the government in exchange for testifying against his former colleagues.
