MADRID â€" A former employee of JPMorgan Chase, Javier Martin-Artajo, was arrested in Spain on Tuesday, after the United States government charged him over his involvement in a trading scandal that led to losses of more than $6 billion.
In a brief statement, Spanish police said that Mr. Martin-Artajo handed himself to police on Tuesday morning after they had earlier made contact with him. His case will now be handled by the Spain national court, whose duties include ruling on extradition requests.
The Spanish banker was released on Tuesday by the judge in charge of the case, Santiago Pedraz, after agreeing to remain at the disposal of the Spanish judiciary and having his passport confiscated to prevent him from leaving the country, according to a judicial source, who asked not to be named. The person would not confirm whether bail was posted.
Earlier this month, prosecutors in New York charged Mr. Martin-Artajo, a manager who oversaw the trading strategy, alongside another lower-ranking former JPMorgan employee, Julien Grout. Both had worked for an investment unit of the bank in London that made extensive and foolhardy bets last year on so-called credit derivatives, which allow traders to bet on the perceived creditworthiness of companies.
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said this month that the traders deliberately valued such bets to make their losses look lower than they actually were in the early months of 2012. The two employees have been charged with wire fraud, falsifying bank records and contributing to false regulatory filings. Prosecutors also charged them with conspiracy to commit those crimes.
Mr. Martin-Artajo’s lawyers had said at the time that their client was “confident that when a complete and fair reconstruction of these complex events is completed, he will be cleared of any wrongdoing.â€
Mr. Grout left London this year for France, but his lawyer, Edward Little, also said that he had “absolutely no intention of fleeing.â€
