Former UBS trader jailed for Britain's biggest fraud faces deportation
LONDON (Reuters) - British authorities are preparing to deport a former UBS (UBSG.S) trader jailed for the country’s biggest fraud which cost the Swiss bank $2.25 billion (£1.75 billion), his spokesman said on Monday.
FILE PHOTO: Former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli arrives at Southwark Crown Court to attend his trial for fraud and false accounting in London, November 15, 2012. The jury in the London trial of former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, who is blamed for a loss of $2.3 billion, retired on Wednesday to consider its verdicts. REUTERS/Andrew Winning/File Photo
Ghanaian citizen Kweku Adoboli was released from prison on probation in 2015 after serving half of a seven-year sentence, but he has now been detained pending his deportation.
His case made global headlines when he was arrested in 2011 and tried in 2012 over the huge losses to UBS, caused by trades far in excess of his authorised risk limits which he had pretended to hedge by booking fictitious off-setting trades.
The 38-year-old was detained on Monday following a routine visit to a Scottish police station, his spokesman, Nick Hopewell-Smith, said via email.
Hopewell-Smith added that he understood Adoboli had now been moved to an immigration removal centre and that the interior ministry had indicated its intention to deport him to Ghana on or after Sept. 10.
“It is still hoped that the (interior minister) will have the common sense not to deport an individual that is so obviously an asset to our community,” Hopewell-Smith said, referring to Adoboli’s work which includes campaigning for cultural change in financial services.
Adoboli, who has lived in Britain since he was 12 but does not have citizenship, has been appealing against a 2014 order by British authorities that he should be sent back to Ghana as a foreign criminal.
An interior ministry spokesman said in a statement it does not routinely comment on individual cases. However, he added: “Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them.”
Adoboli says he is remorseful and should be allowed to stay in Britain because of strong personal ties in the country and the public interest in his advocacy work.
Regulators banned him from working in the financial services industry in 2015, while UBS was fined 29.7 million pounds ($38 million) for systems and control failures.
Reporting by Emma Rumney and Alistair Smout; editing by David Stamp
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