KWEKU Adoboli, a former trader convicted of fraud seven years ago, faces deportation to Ghana after a judicial review application was refused.
Mr Adoboli, who served four years of a seven-year sentence for a £1.4bn fraud at Swiss bank UBS, is to apply directly to the Court of Appeal to contest the decision, even though his legal team were denied leave to appeal.
Mr Adoboli’s legal team argued that after he served his sentence for banking fraud he had dedicated himself to public speaking and hosting workshops about improving probity in the finance sector.
But Judge Mark Ockelton rejected these arguments and said Mr Adoboli had been “talking up” his contribution to improving ethical behaviour in the business world.
“Although assertions are made about his value there is nothing in this material which shows a unique or weighty contribution in the public interest,” he said. “There is no empirical statement of what difference his absence would actually make.”
He said that if Mr Adoboli wanted to continue giving talks he could do so via video-link from Ghana.
In a statement, representatives of Mr Adoboli, who lives in Livingston said he was submitted to a "shocking character assassination" by Judge Ockelton who said it was said felt the application was "totally without merit".
The statement said: "Ockelton implied that the 134 MPs and MSPs who have asked The Home Secretary to halt Kweku’s deportation had been wholly ‘misled’. He was very critical of the many academics and business leaders who had written in support of Kweku, particularly for consistently referring to his trading offences seven years ago as ‘mistakes’, rather than as serious crimes."
The Home Office wants to deport him under laws that require foreign nationals sentenced to more than four years in prison to be sent back to their country of birth.
Adoboli, who was released in 2015, had originally been taken to the Dungaval Immigration Removal Centre and there was an intention to deport him on or after September 10.
The 38-year-old, who describes himself as British, has since his release from jail given many talks to students, financial traders and others in the banking industry about how to operate ethically and avoid making the mistakes he made.#
Adoboli has appealed, asking the home secretary, Sajid Javid, not to deport him because of his longstanding ties with the UK and the fact that he is working hard to educate people to avoid making the same mistakes he made at UBS.
The statement on behalf of Mr Adoboli added: "In what amounted to a second trial ordeal for Kweku, the Judge berated him for failing to plead guilty at his original trial in 2012 and for not admitting that he was essentially a dishonest person.
"In other words, given his conviction, Kweku should always define himself as indelibly dishonest and that his institution was blameless, irrespective of the huge fines it subsequently received from the Financial Standards Authority.
"An extraordinarily vindictive and unforgiving line for anyone to take, given the length of Kweku’s sentence and his 3.5 year term as a model prisoner."
Mr Adoboli's representatives said that "most extraordinary of all" was the judge's interpretation of witness statements from Mr Adoboli's Scottish family and girlfriend "where he seemed to suggest that the latter was intent on breaking up the family home for wanting her own family with Kweku at some stage".
The statement continued: "If justice was done today it was absolutely not a justice likely to be recognised by anyone that knows Kweku Adoboli or anyone familiar with the details of his case. Naturally, his family in Scotland and his many friends strongly reject the picture of Kweku that Judge Ockelton chose to paint.
"A large group of cross party MPs and MSPs, 74,000 petition signatories and a whole host of friends and supporters are standing up for societal values they believe in. They are being labelled as idiots by cynical forces who claim to have our best interests at heart, but in reality maintain nothing of the kind. Forces so wedded to their lumpen pursuit of discredited immigration guidelines, they are set on removing one of the few people actually capable of atoning for their mistakes by making a positive contribution to this community.
"Kweku is using the standard appeals processes available in the justice system to anyone and he’s being the one labelled as ‘manipulating process’. A situation that is both hypocritical and abhorrent."
During his trial at Southwark Crown Court in 2012, he had denied the charges, which related to the period between October 2008 and September 2011.
He argued at his trial nearly six years ago that managers at the bank pushed him to take too many risks. While he admitted causing the loss, he said it wasn’t done dishonestly.
But the jury was told he lost the money in "unprotected, unhedged, incautious and reckless" trades.
The judge, Mr Justice Keith, had told him when he was sentenced: "Whatever the verdict of the jury, you would forever have been known as the man responsible for the largest trading loss in British banking history."
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