After 15 months of being deported to his original home country, Ghana, Kweku Adoboli, the stockbroker, has accused the British government of being behind the breakup of his three-and-a-half-year relationship with his British-born Iraqi girlfriend.
The former UBS Group AG trader explained that during his incarceration, the British government took certain steps that made it difficult for him and his ex-girlfriend to maintain their relationship.
Kweku told Blakk Rasta on the Taxi Driver Show on Zylofon FM that, after going through the trial with him, the British government realized that when they allow him to maintain his relationship with his British-born girlfriend, it will be very difficult for them to deport him. Therefore, he was sent to a foreign-national jail where his girlfriend was not allowed to visit.
“They moved me to a place called Maidstone, where I was not given the opportunities that I would have got if I was a ‘white-British’...They put me in a very tough position which put pressure on our relationship, and then they cranked-up the immigration pressure and I think at some point she realized that she does not think I would get out of prison. So, she had to make a choice of moving to Ghana with me…I suspect that she said no,” Adoboli recounted.
He added that he never had a conversation about the future of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend after he comes out of prison but “openly and honestly, she didn’t want me to feel that she is abandoning me in my predicaments but at the end that is what it was…the struggle was too much so we broke-up".
On the day that his girlfriend called the relationship off, Kweku Adoboli, indicated that they had been on the issue of a breakup for about four to five months but when she finally visited him in prison, sat across him and said she could not do this anymore, this was in front of all the prisoners and staff.
“Don’t let anyone believe that the British are somehow the most tolerant, they are not…they are deeply racist when it comes to how they handle foreign nationals,” an emotional Kweku Adoboli said.
When asked why he did not go for a British passport, he indicated that due to the nature of his job, he could not have the time to go for his British passport, therefore, he was using his Ghanaian passport for his work travels.
“I was proud of my ‘Ghanaianess’ and I had a Ghanaian passport in which there was a 10-year US visa, 5-year European visit. I could travel to work when I need to, therefore it was not a priority to me. Our Ghanaian passport isn't as good as the British passport," he noted.
Kweku Adoboli, who will be 40 by May, now speaks at conferences on mortgages, mostly in Ghana and across Africa.