Former trader facing deportation from UK gets temporary reprieve

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Kweku Adoboli, a former UBS trader jailed for a $2.25 billion (1.7 billion pounds) fraud, has won a temporary reprieve from deportation to Ghana, his spokesman said on Monday.

Adoboli, who was born in Ghana but has lived in Britain since he was 12, has been granted a review by the interior ministry, meaning he will likely be allowed to go back to his home in Scotland for several months.

"Common sense has broken out: sending a 38-year-old man to a country where he has not lived since the age of four was always madness," his spokesman said in an emailed statement

"It is anticipated that Kweku will be allowed home to his Scottish family and partner, Alice within the next 5-10 days. The full review process is likely to take several months."

Adoboli, who does not have British citizenship, has been appealing against a 2014 order by British authorities that he should be sent back to Ghana as a foreign criminal.

He was released from prison on probation in 2015 after serving half of a seven-year sentence, but was then detained pending deportation.

He was convicted in 2012 over the huge losses to UBS, Britain's biggest ever fraud, caused by trades far in excess of his authorised risk limits, which he had pretended to hedge by booking bogus off-setting trades.

Regulators banned him from working in the financial services industry in 2015, while UBS was fined 29.7 million pounds ($38 million) for systems and control failures.

(Reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary; editing by Andrew Roche)