Kweku Adoboli

Early life and education

Kweku Adoboli was born on 21 May 1980 in Tema, Ghana, to John Adoboli, a senior United Nations official. He spent his early years in Israel, Syria and Iraq, before moving to the United Kingdom in 1991. He attended Ackworth School in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, where he was head boy. In his profile on the school’s website, he wrote that he wanted to be an athlete. In 2000, after finishing school, he started reading Chemical Engineering at the University of Nottingham, but switched to E-commerce and Digital Business Studies. In 2000, he was elected as the Communications Officer of University of Nottingham Students' Union. In mid-2002, Adoboli worked as a summer intern at UBS's operations department. He graduated from the University of Nottingham in July 2003.

Career

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 14 September 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 15 September 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".

Incarceration and release

Adoboli was incarcerated at Verne Prison in Dorset, Ford Prison in West Sussex and Maidstone Prison in Kent. He was released in June 2015. As he had never sought British citizenship and had remained a Ghanaian citizen (despite having lived in the United Kingdom since 1991), he was subject to the British Home Office's policy of deporting any foreign national who has been given a sentence of more than four years. He was served with deportation proceedings in July 2015, and was therefore unable to work, and lived with friends in London and Edinburgh. He lost an appeal for deportation in July 2016[[1]].