Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has banned Mr Charles Lam Chung Yiu, a former associate director of UBS AG (UBS), from re-entering the industry for life because his criminal convictions led the SFC to consider him not a fit and proper person to be licensed or registered to carry on regulated activities.
In a statement on 2 September, the SFC said Lam was sentenced by the Court of First Instance on 7 November 2023 to imprisonment of seven years after his convictions of two counts of theft and two counts of dealing with property known or believed to represent proceeds of an indictable offence.
The court found that between 13 March and 27 October 2020, when Lam was overseeing a project in UBS to compensate clients who had been overcharged in previous transactions, he exploited his access to UBS’s system to alter the information of rightful recipients under the project and made at least 46 payments, totalling US$1,875,030.64, to his own accounts or for his own gain.
The court also found that between March and December 2020, various bank accounts controlled by Lam had received cash deposits from UBS and other sources, a substantial sum of which was transferred out within a short period of time, and the monies being dealt with were all connected to Lam’s theft of money from UBS.
