Former UBS Rogue Trader: Kweku Adoboli Arrives In Ghana

Kweku Adoboli, the former UBS trader convicted of fraud, and deported to Ghana has arrived in Ghana safely.

He lived in Britain for a quarter of a century, later was sentenced to seven years behind bars in 2012 after he lost the record-breaking sum while working for UBS.

A friend and campaigner said the 38-year-old had been detained in Scotland on Monday and placed on a Kenyan Airways flight leaving Heathrow for Ghana on Wednesday evening.

However, the campaign has vowed not to give up the fight to prevent reverse his deportation.

“Kweku arrived in Accra safe and sound following his effective rendering by @ukhomeoffice without any prior notice given to his legal team, friends or family. He was guarded by 5 UK marshals and greeted by his family. Thank you for your support so far and we carry on our fight,” the tweet read.

Adoboli was deported on a flight from Heathrow airport on Wednesday afternoon after a lengthy legal battle with the British government to stay in the country despite his fraud conviction.

Adoboli was born in Ghana but left when he turned four and has lived in the UK since he was 12.

The former trader at the Swiss bank UBS was sentenced to seven years in prison in fraud charges.

His unauthorised trading cost the bank £1.3bn, with an even greater hit to its share values, but he insists he never personally benefited financially from his crime.

Mr Adoboli was released in 2014 after serving half his sentence and has been fighting deportation ever since.

Background

Adoboli joined UBS’s London office as a graduate trainee in September 2006. After working for two years as a trading analyst in the bank’s back office, he was promoted to a Delta One trading desk.

In 2008, he became a director on the ETF desk, and by 2010, he was promoted to director, with a total annual salary of almost £200,000.

Beginning in 2008, Adoboli started using the bank’s money for unauthorised trades. He entered false information into UBS’s computers to hide the risky trades he was making.

He exceeded the bank’s per-employee daily trading limit of US$100 million and failed to hedge his trades against risk.

He also used his personal funds on two spread betting accounts, IG Index and City Index, where he lost around £100,000. In mid-2011, UBS launched an internal investigation into Adoboli’s trades.

On September 14, 2011, Adoboli wrote an e-mail to his manager admitting to booking false trades. His trades cost the bank $2 billion (£1.3 billion) and wiped off $4.5 billion (£2.7 billion) from its share price. The trading losses he incurred while trading for his bank were the largest unauthorised trading losses in British history.

Charges and conviction

On September 15, 2011, Adoboli was arrested by City of London Police. He was charged with two counts of fraud by abuse of position and four counts of false accounting.

He was in prison on remand until 8 June 2012, when he was granted bail subject to being electronically tagged and placed under curfew at a friend’s house. On the morning of 20 November 2012, a jury at Southwark Crown Court unanimously found Adoboli guilty on one count of fraud. Later the same day, after receiving an instruction allowing for a majority decision with a single vote against, the jury found him guilty of a second count of fraud. The jury also found him not guilty on the four false accounting charges.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The City of London Police said: “This was the UK’s biggest fraud, committed by one of the most sophisticated fraudsters the City of London Police has ever come across.”

Adoboli was incarcerated at Verne Prison in Dorset, Ford Prison in West Sussex and Maidstone Prison in Kent. He was released in June 2015.