Nigel Farage is even angrier than usual. For good reason. The former leader of the Brexit Party revealed last week that the bank he had worked for for more than 40 years had told him it would close his personal and business accounts.
Although he did not name the bank, it is believed to be Coutts & Co: the poshest of them all, with many members of the royal family as account holders.
Farage has been unable to discover why he was dumped by these money men in frock coats. “I have not been given an explanation as to why this is happening to me,” he said.
“This is serious political persecution at the highest level of our system. The establishment is trying to force me out of the UK by closing my bank accounts.’
He had initially said that “the only explanation I could think of” was the claim last year by the Labor MP, Sir Chris Bryant, that Farage had “received £548,573 from Russia Today in 2018 alone: this is from the Russian state ‘. .
DOMINIC LAWSON: Nigel Farage is even angrier than usual. For good reason
So Bryant, chairman of the Commons Standards Committee, had named Farage as someone who should be subject to sanctions in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, Bryant’s claim is completely fictional. That figure is what Farage’s media business accounts show was earned through all that work that year, which included well-paid regular appearances for LBC and America’s Fox News.
Farage had not performed for Russia Today in 2018 and only made a few thousand pounds from it in 2017.
In an article last week, Farage complained that “despite my pleas to him … to correct this allegation, there has been no retraction [from Bryant]’.
But he later came up with another possible cause for his banking problems: that he is a politically exposure person (PEP).
The term defines anyone holding a ‘prominent public position’ and has its origins in a 1987 initiative against corruption and money laundering launched by the G7 group of leading economies.
This was designed to allow banks and other financial institutions to subject each PEP to intense scrutiny when opening accounts, as they posed a much higher risk of possible involvement in corruption and money laundering than the man or woman due to their public position. in the street.
This seems to be the apparent reason why, according to Farage when trying to find a replacement for Coutts, ‘I’ve been turned down by seven other banks. Apparently I am a ‘politically exposed person’ and bear too many risks and too high compliance costs’.
The PEP system came into effect in this country under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, which referred to people in prominent public functions ‘other than [in] The United Kingdom’.
In other words, identifying powerful people from several highly corrupt countries, where political power and bribery went together like eggs and bacon. But the financial institutions here immediately applied it to members of our own parliament – even though it only became mandatory with the Money Laundering Regulations 2017.
And not just them, but their immediate family — which typically includes the PEP’s “parents, siblings, spouse, children, in-laws, grandparents, and grandchildren.”
That’s why my daughter Domenica, now 28, got caught in this swamp.
In 2016 we decided to open a bank account for her. She has Down syndrome; this was not something she could do herself. But when my wife Rosa went to the Barclays in our nearest town (where Rosa had had an account for many years), she was told that Domenica would not be able to have an account. No reason was given.
Fortunately, Rosa knew the manager there – the position no longer exists and the branch itself is about to close – and he said he would look into the matter.
He came back to Rosa: “I’m really sorry, but it’s out of our hands. It’s because of the money laundering risk.
“I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s because of Domenica’s grandfather. He is a politically exposed person.’ This was a reference to Nigel Lawson, my late father, the former Chancellor, who was then a member of the House of Lords.
And as the Lords is a legislative assembly, that counted among the regulations. As was, absurdly, his granddaughter, who was of course unaware of the bank’s implication that she might be linked to money laundering, or the financing of an international drug cartel.
We eventually managed to open an account for Domenica there, but it involved the most exhausting forms to fill out, with a lot of back and forth between us and the Barclays compliance officers in London.
Later, Rosa tried to set up an account in Brighton for the charity she founded, Team Domenica, which aims to get young adults with intellectual disabilities into paid employment.
This time it was HSBC – the bank closest to Team Domenica’s headquarters – who said, sorry, we can’t do that for you.
But on this occasion it had nothing to do with my father. No, it was because Rosa’s older brother, Christopher, is a Viscount.
This seemed even more perverse: he is not a member of the House of Lords – the vast majority of hereditary peers were kicked out a quarter of a century ago – and thus had no ‘prominent public office’ at all.
But HSBC wouldn’t budge, and in the end Rosa had to go to a much smaller bank, much less convenient geographically, but also less risk averse: that is, it was willing to believe my wife when she told me her charity wouldn’t be paid. a front for an international crime syndicate through a non-existent connection to the House of Lords.
The MP who has worked more than anyone else to bring some sense of proportion and sense to this is Sir Charles Walker, former chairman of the Commons Procedure Committee.
In 2016, he launched a parliamentary debate on the issue, with several members telling stories of how not only they, but their children, had been treated as potentially serious criminals, without any evidence.
Conservative MP Heather Wheeler said: ‘I got a call from a bank I had banked with for over 30 years to be told that I was at high risk, that the bank would no longer do business with me and that my account was being closed. …then a second bank wrote me that they are closing my account without any explanation.’
As Sir Charles observed, ‘Forget people who serve in public life; let’s remember those who left it. Ex-army officers, ex-judges, ex-members of political parties and former members of parliament could be denied the opportunity to serve on charity councils, as their presence would confer the status of politically exposed person on the rest of the council.”
Coincidentally, last week – not least as a result of Sir Charles’s efforts – Parliament passed an amendment requiring the Treasury to amend the regulations so that British PEPs must be treated as ‘lower risk’ than those from a country other than the UK. We’ll see if that makes any difference.
When I spoke to Sir Charles yesterday he told me he knew of ten current MPs who have seen their bank accounts closed, some of them ‘who have only been backbenchers’. . . They have nothing like Nigel Farage’s political footprint.”
Mr. Farage made the decision and said: This is serious political persecution at the highest level of our system. The establishment is trying to force me out of the UK by closing my bank accounts’
He also pointed out how the banks use the so-called ‘anti-tip law’ (which prohibits financial institutions from telling customers anything to warn them of an investigation into their affairs) as a convenient cover to deny the ‘banned’ account holder any details why he or she is considered suspicious.
I asked Sir Charles if there is any known case of a Member of Parliament being involved in money laundering.
‘No!’ he answered. “This is all utter, utter fantasy! They should target corrupt despots and dictators, not grandmothers of MPs. But the banks just do what they want.’
Although you probably already knew that.