Widow accuses bank over suicide

The widow of a business analyst who jumped to his death from a fifth floor balcony has hit out at his employers.

An inquest jury returned a verdict of suicide after Richard Chang, 48, fell to his death from the headquarters of Abbey in Euston, London, last July.

Earlier he was quizzed over letters alleging corruption and bribery.

His wife Lay Peng Lim said her husband was "deceived" about the meeting but an Abbey spokeswoman said investigations had been carried out correctly.

Ms Lim said "had this meeting not taken place, Richard would still be with us today".

Linguistic evidence

"Richard had everything to live for. The children and I are absolutely devastated. We will never get over our loss."

St Pancras Coroner's Court heard how investigators had questioned Mr Chang, of Hackney, east London, for two-and-a-half hours about anonymous letters sent to bosses alleging corruption.

He was then showed fingerprint and linguistic evidence suggesting he had circulated the memos.

The corruption allegations were found to be untrue but bosses feared the writer would try to use knowledge of its IT trading systems to sabotage the business.

We believe the investigation was carried out in the correct manner Abbey spokeswoman

The three-day inquest heard how investigators had secretly taken fingerprints from glass bottles left in meeting rooms to check if they matched those on the letters.

After whittling down a list of suspects from some 600 employees, they were convinced Mr Chang was involved.

Expressing her condolences to the family, a spokeswoman for Abbey said:" These are very unusual circumstances and we had some very serious allegations which had to be investigated.

"We believe the investigation was carried out in the correct manner."