Andrew Ratnage, 49, a former relationship manager at the bank, abused his senior position to approve a string of false and inflated valuations for homes he owned, a court at the Old Bailey was told.
| The charges and pleas in full |
1 Ratnage [and Pask]: obtaining a service by deception. Guilty 2 Ratnage [and Pask]: obtaining a service by deception. Guilty 3 Ratnage [Pask]: false accounting. Guilty 4 Ratnage [and Pask]: obtaining a service by deception. Guilty 5 Ratnage [and Pask]: fraud. Not guilty 6 Andrew Ratnage: false accounting. Guilty 7 Andrew Ratnage: false accounting. Guilty 8 Andrew Ratnage: false accounting. Guilty 9 Andrew Ratnage: false accounting. Guilty 10 Andrew Ratnage: false accounting. Guilty 11 Andrew Ratnage: false accounting. Guilty |
The scam involved ramping up the values of the properties to obtain excessively large loans.
The five properties were in Barretts Grove and Lidfield Road, Stoke Newington, north London; Rayne Road, in Braintree, Essex; Roman Road, Mile End, east London; and Middle Wall, in Whitstable, Kent.
Ratnage funnelled money into two companies called Oasis Property Investments and Oasis Property Trading between July 2005 and May 2010.
At the brief hearing, he spoke only to confirm his name and enter guilty pleas to three counts of obtaining a service by deception and seven counts of false accounting. Ratnage denies one count of fraud, which is to the value of approximately £1m.
Judge Cooke QC ordered the Crown to indicate within 14 days whether they would seek to have Ratnage tried on the single count of fraud.
The judge warned the banker a custodial sentence was likely. He said: “The quantum of it is such that it seems inevitable to me.”
Ratnage, of Brentwood, Essex, was released on conditional bail, with a residence requirement and a ban from seeking work in the financial sector.
His co-defendant, Raymond Pask, has yet to enter pleas and will return to the Old Bailey on 10 January for a plea and case management hearing.
No date for Ratnage’s sentencing has been set.
The two former Royal Bank of Scotland executives had first appeared in the Old Bailey to hear the trial on 30 September.
