Barclays Whistleblowers Claim Rules Are “Beneath Them”
Ten years on since the banking collapse, Barclays faces a number of allegations which Nicky Morgan, chair of the UK parliament’s Treasury Committee, called “worrying.” While the shadow chancellor has called for a “thorough and independent investigation.”
A months long investigation by Financial News, which spoke to four whistleblowers at the bank, raises a number of serious allegations, including claims the bank disregards the rules.
“They are convinced of their own infallibility. The idea that they would need to respect the process beneath them,” one whistleblower said.
An executive who worked in compliance said senior executives were “bizarrely arrogant.” The executive in question claims there were discussions about his position at the bank after he blew the whistle.
Another former Barclays employee of the investment banking division, who claimed his/her department was engaging in illegal activities, also expressed concerns about protections for whistleblowers.
“In theory you raise a complaint and then you are untouchable. The investigation should be independent but the reality of it is that it’s not. I would not trust the process,” the whistleblower said.
Barclays has denied all of the above, stating they rejected the “unfounded and untested allegations” arising from FN’s investigation. A Barclays spokesperson further told FN:
“To our knowledge none have been tested in court or reported to regulators, as would be the right of any complainant in the alleged circumstances.”
Barclays’ chief executive, Jes Staley, was fined £642,430 by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority in May over his treatment of a whistleblower.
That’s less than 10% of his yearly salary, with Stanley still keeping his job and running the bank today, while whistleblowers claim it is hard to find another position after blowing the whistle.
Barclays moreover is facing scrutiny over online banking outages with their services down on Thursday and complains continuing today over inaccessibility of mobile banking.
One customer claims his money went missing during the online service failure with Paul Girling telling the BBC:
“A significant payment due into my account has gone missing. It has been confirmed as sent but not received.”
There has been a litany of bank service failures recently, with one paper calling it a fever, but what is most concerning is allegations of disregard for compliance rules at the bank, with three senior executives in the bank’s compliance division leaving their roles since last year.
All this comes just days after europe’s biggest banking scandal since 2008 when Denmark’s biggest bank revealed in an internal investigation report that the vast majority of €200 billion ($234 billion) worth of transactions were “suspicious,” suggesting large scale money laundering.
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