Former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, jailed in Britain for causing the Swiss bank $2.3 billion (2.0 billion euros) in losses through fraudulent trading, faces imminent deportation to Ghana, his friends said Thursday as they campaigned for him to stay. The 38-year-old served half of his seven-year sentence for fraud, before being released in 2015.
After losing several appeals against his deportation, he is now in detention awaiting removal next Tuesday to Ghana, where he was born, his friends and lawyer said. With the support of around 100 lawmakers, they are fighting to keep him in Britain, where they say he has worked to improve governance and compliance in the finance sector since his release from jail.
They note he has lived in Britain since he was 12 and has not been to Ghana since he was four. "He has never shied away from the fact that he did something wrong," said Hannah Bardell, MP for Livingston near Edinburgh, where Adoboli was living. "But it is absolutely clear that he was part of a system that was completely broken and is still broken," she told reporters, adding that he had a "genuine desire to give back".
Adoboli has worked with the Universities of Stirling, Edinburgh and Liverpool and had also written in the Financial Times about how financial institutions can better protect themselves against risk. "If the UK government is really serious about... reforming banking and finance, then they have somebody in their midst who they can work with," Bardell said.