{UAH} UK minister refuses to halt deportation of UBS 'rogue trader'
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The UK government has refused to intervene to prevent the deportation of Kweku Adoboli, a former UBS banker jailed for Britain's biggest ever fraud, who will be sent to Ghana this week despite leaving his birth country as a four-year-old.
Caroline Nokes, the immigration minister, said the government's decision to deport Adoboli had been "upheld independently, at several stages, by the courts" and it would not be appropriate for her to intervene despite appeals from 132 MPs and MSPs.
Nokes's refusal to intervene means it is almost certain that Adoboli will be placed on a a flight to Accra, the Ghanaian capital, on Tuesday. His legal team is preparing a fresh application for judicial review on public interest grounds to be submitted later on Monday, but his lawyers concede it is very unlikely to be accepted.
Adoboli, 38, who was found guilty in 2012 of fraud that lost his Swiss bank $2.3bn (£1.8bn), is being deported to Ghana because he is not a British citizen, despite having lived in the UK for 26 years. He was sentenced to seven years in jail and served half of that time.
Nokes said the law "requires that the secretary of state must make a deportation order in respect of a foreign criminal where they are sentenced to a period of 12 months or more imprisonment".
She added in a letter to Adoboli's MP Hannah Bardell: "Although Mr Adoboli's offence was not one of violence, he committed a serious offence and this was reflected in the length of his sentence.
"Financial crime, like all crime, has an impact on the society that we live in and the public expects robust action to be taken against foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crime.
"After consideration of all the individual circumstances of his case the Home Office was satisfied that Mr Adoboli's case does not meet any of the exceptions in the 2007 [Borders] Act and a deportation order was served on him on 22 July 2014.
"The decision to to deport him has been upheld independently, at several stages, by the courts. His application to appeal to the court of appeal was dismissed on 28 June 2018 and on 13 August his application for a judicial review was refused."
Adoboli, who is being held in an immigration removal centre near Heathrow airport, said: "By denying the application of discretion to my case, a precedent is being created that will allow the Home Office to deny human rights to many other deserving cases.
"This is the hostile environment at work and we should all use this opportunity to persuade the government to deliver on the 'fair and decent' immigration policy it promised."
Nokes said the government was "committed to a fair and humane immigration policy" and rejected the suggestion that Adoboli's treatment was similar to that of the Windrush generation of immigrants.
"The Home Office recognises the weight of dissatisfaction towards the treatment of the Windrush generation and officials are working hard to put this right … I do not believe that the issues faces by the Windrush generation, who were legally resident in the United Kingdom but did not have the documentation to prove it, are analogous to Mr Adoboli's case."
Nokes said the UK Borders Act 2007 does not provide for ministerial discretion and that it "would not therefore be appropriate for my intervention".
Nokes has previously blocked at least two British citizens on Twitter when they asked for her assistance after the Home Office failed to respond to their complaints or appeals from their MPs.
This article originally appeared on The Guardian
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