U.S. Moves to Drop Charges Against Ex-Traders in ‘London Whale’ Case<br />The filing simply said, “Based on a review of recent statements and writings made by Iksil, however, the government no longer believes<br />that it can rely on the testimony of Iksil in prosecuting this case.”<br />The decision by Mr. Bharara’s office to strike the deal with Mr. Iksil under which he was to testify as a cooperating witness was questioned<br />because he was the most closely identified with the trading losses.<br />The prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss charges against the bank employees, Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout, saying<br />that recent statements by a key cooperating witness, Bruno Iksil, had thrown the reliability of his testimony into doubt.<br />The original criminal complaints filed against Mr. Grout<br />and Mr. Martin-Artajo described Mr. Iksil as something of a lone dissenter within the bank when it came to dealing with mounting losses on a series of derivatives trades that went bad in 2011 and 2012.<br />By MATTHEW GOLDSTEINJULY 21, 2017<br />An effort to hold someone accountable for JPMorgan Chase’s loss of more than $6 billion in the so-called London Whale trading scandal is coming<br />to an end, with federal prosecutors in Manhattan moving on Friday to dismiss all criminal charges against two former bank employees.<br />Mr. Dimon did himself no favors when reports about the losses first emerged by dismissing the matter as a “tempest in a teapot.”<br />A year later, Mr. Bharara threw that language back at Mr. Dimon in announcing the filing of criminal charges against Mr. Grout and Mr. Martin-Artajo.
