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Ex-UBS Trader Adoboli Lands in Ghana After Deportation Flight

Ex-UBS Trader Adoboli Lands in Ghana After Deportation Flight

(Bloomberg) -- Former UBS Group AG trader Kweku Adoboli, who was convicted for causing a $2.3 billion loss at the bank, arrived in Ghana -- the place of his birth -- after losing a legal fight to stay in Britain.

The 38-year-old landed in Accra on a flight from Nairobi Thursday morning, Edith Arhin, immigration officer in charge at Kotoka International Airport, said in an interview. She declined to comment on where Adoboli is now. Adoboli was sent back to Ghana after he was detained by the U.K. Monday when reporting to police in Scotland.

The move by the U.K. Home Office more than likely ends a saga that began more than seven years ago when Adoboli, on his way to racking up the biggest unauthorized trading loss in British history, warned Facebook friends with a post: “need a miracle.” The flight left on another dramatic day as U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled her plan for the country’s exit from the European Union.

“As the press is consumed by Brexit, @ukhomeoffice is about to deport @KwekuAdoboli to a country he hasn’t lived in since age 4,” David Lammy, a member of Parliament from London, said on Twitter Wednesday. “This is a disgrace and brings great shame on the U.K.”

The former banker, whose parents and two sisters live in Ghana, was convicted of two counts of fraud for causing the multibillion-dollar loss at UBS’s London unit. He tried to cover up his bad bets during July and August 2011 amid a market sell-off, and his potential losses reached $12 billion, prosecutors said at his trial.

For his trading violations, Adoboli served about half of a seven-year sentence, getting out in 2015. His case reverberated through the bank and London’s City financial center, taking down UBS’s chief executive officer, sparking a sweeping overhaul of bank strategy that echoed across the industry and reminding the world that bankers’ behavior hadn’t necessarily improved since the 2008 crash.

He had been close to deportation in September but his supporters publicized his case, and a judge agreed to review the issue. The Home Office wanted to deport him under rules that say foreign nationals sentenced to more than four years in prison should be sent back to their country of birth.

That judge dismissed the case Oct. 24, putting him back in legal limbo, and this time, supporters said the Home Office gave little notice of his movements.

The Home Office says it doesn’t comment on individual cases. Nick Hopewell-Smith, Adoboli’s spokesman, said he didn’t have an immediate comment on the situation Wednesday.

Since his release from prison, Adoboli lived with a friend’s family outside Edinburgh, and sought to establish himself as an advocate of cultural change in investment banking.

The finance industry had taken up Adoboli’s whole professional life. He was born in Accra, Ghana, to a then-United Nations official. As a child, he lived in Israel, Syria and Iraq as the family traveled for work until, at age 12, he was sent to a Quaker boarding school in West Yorkshire, England. He attended Nottingham University, where he was hired by UBS as an intern.

--With assistance from Kaye Wiggins.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Browning in London at jbrowning9@bloomberg.net;Moses Mozart Dzawu in Accra at mdzawu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Christopher Elser

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.