The vague "honest services" statutes, a favorite of prosecutors, were struck down.
So if Mr. Adoboli had been in the United States, he would have been charged under the federal bank fraud statute, not the honest services statute.
The Justice Department has complained about the Supreme Court's restrictive interpretation of the honest services statute that does not allow it to pursue cases involving improper conflicts of interest.
"The honest services statute is just one arrow in the government's quiver," said David Z. Seide, a lawyer at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle in Washington.
If his convictions stumble on the grounds that the "honest services" statute is too broad, then he's prevailing on a technicality.
The Supreme Court significantly narrowed the scope of the honest services statute in Skilling v. United States, the case against Jeffrey K. Skilling, Enron's former chief executive, by requiring prosecutors to show that the dishonest conduct involved receipt of a bribe or kickback.
So the accusation is not that Mr. Adoboli is a thief, but that he abused his authority through dishonest acts, a type of fraud that is similar to the "right of honest services" statute in the United States.
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court dealt a setback to federal prosecutors who won a corruption conviction of Joseph L. Bruno, the former Senate majority leader, when it overturned portions of the federal "honest services" statute.
(An appeals court freed her).The "honest services" statute, if taken seriously, "would seemingly cover a salaried employee's phoning in sick to go to a ball game," fumes Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice.
The British statute might be a worthwhile approach for Congress to consider if it wants to amend the honest services statute to mitigate the Skilling decision because linking dishonesty to financial gain or loss is a useful way to reach frauds that do not involve bribery or kickbacks but still cause significant harm.
As Justice Antonin Scalia has written, "without some coherent limiting principle to define what 'the intangible right of honest services' is," the honest services statute "invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators and corporate C.E.O.'s who engage in any manner of unappealing or unethical conduct".
