Here at Dealscape we've been a little slow to pick up the tale of the NatWest Three. Perhaps the fact that some of us got our starts covering the police beat at small suburban community newspapers has given us an aversion to these stories. However, the tale of the NatWest Three is beginning to read like a "Law & Order" episode with Wednesday's news that a banker affiliated with the trio was found dead Tuesday in a London park making it impossible to ignore any longer. On the outside chance you are unaware of the NatWest Three, they are bankers from Royal Bank of Scotland's NatWest unit who allegedly were involved in the Enron scandal. The trio is now being extradited to the U.S. to stand trial — a controversial topic among British executives worried that they too could be extradited because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. An affiliate of the trio, Neil Coulbeck, the former head of Royal Bank of Scotland's North American financial markets group, was first reported missing on July 6 by his wife, according to a BBC report. While not part of the NatWest Three, Coulbeck had been questioned by the U.S. FBI about the trio's involvement in the Enron scandal. While the case has been assigned to the homicide unit of the London police department, the authorities are only classifying the case as an "unexplained" death for the time being. —Matthew Wurtzel
See story from BBC.com
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