The checks that should be in place to stop this sort of thing happening are extremely basic

Nick Leeson

In an interview on BBC television, Mr Leeson said:

"The... fundamental question is; why didn't some of the middle and senior managers of the bank stop him earlier?

"The similarities with the Barings case seem to be very striking."

'Very, very frightening'

Mr Leeson, who was himself jailed in Singapore during the middle of the 1990s after losing about �850m of his bank's money, said it seemed as if the AIB subsidiary's trader had taken ever bigger risks to recover losses.

"I find it very, very frightening that such a thing can happen again [after Barings].

"It means that the same levels of incompetence and negligence within the mid- and senior management of the bank are still there.

"The checks that should be in place to stop this sort of thing happening are extremely basic, and people haven't been doing them," he said.

"The problems that were endemic at Barings are still there at AIB, and I find that frightening."