Post date: Sep 17, 2011 11:52:27 AM
As UBS trader Kweku Adoboli appears in court in London, his father insisted that his son 'acted with good intentions' and asked the world not to judge him before trial.
LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (STILLS) (SEPTEMBER 16, 2011) REUTERS - The father of a trader accused of losing Swiss banking giant UBS about $2 billion in unauthorised deals said on Friday (September 16) his son 'acted with good intentions' and asked the world not to judge him before trial.
Kweku Adoboli was charged by British authorities with fraud and false accounting dating back to 2008, a day after the Swiss bank was plunged into crisis."I want the world to have an open mind. I don't want the world to judge him before he reaches the court," said Kweku Adoboli's father, John, speaking from the family house in the affluent neighbourhood of Community 12 in Tema where he lives.
"I know my son he will never do that thing in order to benefit from it, if it happened may be it is a mistake so the British system or the traders everywhere in the World should open their minds and see what actually happened," Adoboli said.
He said the family was devastated by news of the charges and that he had still not spoken to his son.
"After hearing about this, I was shattered, the whole family is shattered, devastated and surprised at the same time," Adoboli said.
"While I am making every effort to contact my son, I wish to assure the whole world that Kweku Adoboli is a man of integrity," he added.
Adoboli said he brought up his children to be 'God fearing'. He said his children received the best education he could give them.
Abodoli, who described himself as a 'self-made man', worked for Ghana at the United Nations, retiring in June 2007 after serving on missions that took him to Israel, Cambodia, Afghanistan, South Lebanon, East Timor and Kosovo.
He said he was hoping to fly to Britain next week to be with his son, and was applying for a visa to do so.
"I am arranging myself to get a visa to travel to London as soon as possible, in order to give him moral support," Adoboli said.
Police arrested 31-year-old Kweku Adoboli overnight at UBS's London office on suspicion of fraud after the bank discovered a problem on Wednesday.
Ordinary people in his family's hometown of Tema fear this incident would stain the country's image.
"When I first heard about a Ghanaian being involved in a bank fraud, you know it was very bad because for international reputation, it tarnishes the image of the country," said Abdul-Latif Seidu, a man who lives in Tema.
The latest rogue trader scandal is an unwelcome blow to a Swiss bank that had started to see client confidence return this year after it was rescued by the Swiss state in 2008 following massive losses on toxic assets.
In 2008 Jerome Kerviel, then a trader at Societe Generale, racked up a $6.7 billion loss in unauthorised deals.