A MAN accused of Britain's biggest banking fraud was "a gamble or two away from destroying Switzerland's largest bank for his own gain", a court heard.

Kweku Adoboli, 32, is accused of gambling away £1.4 billion while working as a UBS trader.

At one point he was at risk of causing the bank losses of $12bn (£7.4bn), jurors at Southwark Crown Court were told.

Adoboli, who is facing two counts of fraud and two counts of false accounting between October 2008 and last September, lost the money on high risk trades aimed at boosting his annual bonuses and job prospects.

Sasha Wass, QC, for the prosecution, said: "He is on trial because he lost his bank $2.3bn. He fraudulently gambled it away. He did all of this by exceeding his trading limits, by inventing fictitious deals to conceal this and then he lied to his bosses.

"Mr Adoboli's motive for this behaviour was to increase his bonus, his status, his job prospects and, of course, his ego."

Adoboli worked for UBS buying and selling exchange traded funds, which track bonds or commodities such as metals.

The bank used hedging to reduce risk, which means buying one type of investment while simultaneously selling a similar one to mitigate any possible loss.

Prosecutors claim Adoboli failed to hedge several of his investments to boost profits and earn a larger bonus.

Adoboli, from White-chapel, London, was described by the prosecution as a "rogue trader" and a "naked gambler" who "fraudulently side-stepped" the bank's rules.

Jurors heard that Adoboli, a public school-educated former headboy who got a job at UBS in 2003 as a graduate then worked his way up, will claim he was not acting dishonestly and that colleagues knew what he had been doing.