Posted on 07/18/2023 7:29:34 PM PDT by RandFan
(Excerpt) Read more at twitter.com ...
Nigel is all over the front pages later and not just on FR!
I must thank the Mods who Front Paged the story here earlier for getting the word out.
Question is: Will anything be done?
All of Britain should be discussing this.
Nigel’s daughter also got her accounts shut down. That sounds like what Russia and North Korea do.
They must be doing it based on surname and yes it’s very much like North Korea (punishing blood relatives)
So a bank in the UK can refuse to do business with a customer who doesn’t align with their values, but a baker in Colorado must do business with with a customer who doesn’t align with his values?
Agree, this is a big deal. But there are two different issues in play.
1. Enterprise Risk in the financial sector generally. An overly litigious setup exists to the point where banks must indemnify themselves against existential fines if there’s a data breach, organised crime is laundering through the banking system, politically exposed persons are being bankrolled openly by rogue nations, and so on.
I’m going through a seriously adversarial bank process right now not because I’m a crook but because practically everybody working in my field now has to prove that they’re untouched by dodgy money and can’t easily be targeted by blackmailers.
And yet my inbox is full of things like, join this class action lawsuit against the banks because they overprofited from fees, sue the hospitals because of possible misdiagnosis, sue the city if you’ve tripped on a loose paving stone, sue the city over potholes...
This toxic adversarial litigious culture is an American import. “Caution, this hot coffee is hot” labels on coffee cups is inane but it’s there because people can sue if they’re not told.
2. ESG is an Enterprise Risk topic. So is Cyber Risk. So is Regulatory Risk. So is Compliance Risk. A bank that has a “zero risk appetite” for getting fined ends up penalising its customers and suppliers.
If you are super rich but can’t prove you’re not a liability THIS way, you’re a far bigger risk to the bank than if you’re a poor blue collar joe who’s getting into mortgage arrears.
Farage is really not the best example of a person getting unjustly hit. Brexit was funded by the Kremlin, Farage was a figurehead. The Kremlin institutionally backs dirty money and Kompromat. Every attempt to clean up Russian banking has been torpedoed from the very top.
Anyone who gets any pay from the Russian Deep State, has a large public profile, and campaigns for something that is specifically mentioned in the Dugin plan for Russia breaking the West, is an unacceptable Risk liability for the banks.
How do you think the bank can explain that without making specific allegations?
“Values” doesn’t necessarily mean they are attacking Farage because he backed Brexit or backed immigration control.
Far more likely is, their “values” include getting anyone who has too many “Enterprise Risk factors” off the books even if they’re multi millionaires, and Farage ticks way too many of those boxes.
Sure does.
They should be sued.
bttt
No. Like I said the reason banks do this is because there’s a minefield of things they CAN be sued to penury for...
And offloading a customer who is POTENTIALLY likely to detonate the biggest mines isn’t one of those things.
The regulations aren’t created by the banks, they’re created by world governments.
If Farage wants to bank with Coutts he has to satisfy their own criteria as well as satisfy Coutts that he doesn’t get up to anything that’d see them losing their licenses.
The exact same principle applies to me. Only, I didn’t get paid by lobbyists and foreign governments while backing Brexit, I am not politically exposed, I am not sponsored, I didn’t make a lot of money in investment banking, I didn’t short, I’m not a professional carpet bagger, and I can (and do) explain exactly where all my individual wealth came from.
And I don’t publicly campaign on any political cause let alone get paid to do it.
So I can bank with Coutts if I pass their checks, because from a compliance perspective there aren’t any big land mines to worry about.
I couldn’t open a bank account with an islamic bank, because I wouldn’t meet their criteria but that doesn’t bother me. I could open an account with a Russian bank but I wouldn’t trust them.
He could always open an account with Revolut, or an account with a non EU/USA national bank. It’s not as if he’s being totally prevented from banking. He wanted to be a Coutts customer because it’s a prestige bank, they don’t think he’s prestige client material.
Its not just Coutts though. A whole bunch of other banks refused to allow him to open an account to. This was obviously not done for commercial reasons. Banks are colluding and acting as a cartel to impose a social credit system.
They need to be threatened with loss of their banking charter if they refuse to provide accounts for non commercial reasons - as has been done in multiple states when banks started refusing to do business with disfavored businesses. Eg Texas, Florida, etc. That’s fine you can do it. You just can’t do it and do business at all in our state. So if you’re prepared to kiss a market of 30 million/20 million people goodbye, then by all means, keep doing what you’re doing.
The UK needs similar legislation.
Not true. The parent company of Coutts, NatWest, was perfectly happy for him to bank with them subject to him passing the due diligence.
But NatWest is a bank for the ordinary plebs not the bluebloods and millionaire hedge fund managers that Coutts is there for, so Farage didn’t go with NatWest.
Coutts have many of the same policies as NatWest , and all the same regulations as NatWest.
https://www.coutts.com/about.html#:~:text=Our%20parent%20company%20NatWest%20Group,’climate%20positive’%20by%202025.
Yeah....that was a lie. I guess you missed the part where they said it was for commercial reasons only to have their internal discussion come out in which they admitted it was not for commercial reasons and was entirely political.
Not at all comparable - the baker didn’t refuse to do business with people who didn’t align with his views - he refused to engage in activities that required him to participate in and endorse those views.
Major, major difference - don’t give the Left a narrative to latch onto that isn’t true.
In this case the only business Farage is doing with this bank is using their services to store his money in an account. The bank nor its employees were being asked to endorse or engage in activities to promote his political views.
So all you’ve got is evidence that Coutts caters for an elite and has political/class/wealth reasons for denying Farage an account, but the NatWest banking group (constrained by the same regulations as Coutts) doesn’t have the same subjective criteria.
As I said, if Farage couldn’t pass regulatory conditions then no bank would touch him.
Clearly he isn’t there.
So Coutts have gone with other reasons, and other banks even owned by the same firm haven’t.
So Farage isn’t being cancelled by British banks. He’s just the kind of person that Coutts doesn’t want as a customer... Which is a very broad list in Coutts’ case because they specifically want rich bluebloods and aristocrats who don’t create scenes, not rabble rousing uppity popinjays.
So, storm in a tea cup. Coutts being massive snobs is the worst kept secret in 200 years of British banking.
No, actually what we've all got are their own internal deliberations in which they embark on a typical leftist screed calling Farage a "racist", whining about Brexit and openly admit that he is a good customer and perfectly viable commercially but that he "doesn't align with our (Leftist, Globalist, Illegal Immigrant, Gaia Worshipping, Tranny supporting) values".
Furthermore, Farage was denied by 8-9 other British Banks despite having plenty of cash, a high credit score, etc etc. In other words, for political reasons. The same has been true of others - particularly those who were more Conservative - as well as their family members. Let's not pretend this is anything other than political. It obviously is.
Well, since NatWest senior executive has written to Farage saying pretty much what I said, and given they’re part owned by the taxpayers, I’d say you’re wrong.
Coutts’internal politics are the issue, not regulations.
There are other banks that cancelled Farage on similar grounds. Internal policy not government diktat.
But hey, that should be their right. Just as it should be the right of any other business to say it doesn’t want to serve gays or commies.
If the entire sector cancelled Farage then maybe we would need to be a little more STATIST and ban banks from turning customers away on political grounds.
Well since Nigel Farage obtained their internal communications saying exactly why they were dropping him and it was all Leftist politics and they even openly admitted he was perfectly commercially viable but just didn't "align with their values", I'd say you're wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeXok986lik
The baker in Colorado is supposed to provide basic "public accommodation," meaning he cannot discriminate when selling pre-made cakes or other baked "off the shelf" goods.
It's only when being commissioned to create something specially artistic, like a custom wedding cake, that he can decline, SCOTUS ruled.
-PJ
Shocker! The Beeb lied yet again.
Senior BBC journalist Simon Jack fails to apologise for wrongly claiming Coutts closed Nigel Farage’s bank account because ex-UKIP leader didn’t have enough money
- BBC’s business editor Simon Jack says headline in original story is now ‘clarified’
- Nigel Farage says he is lodging a formal complaint and will keep on campaigning
A senior BBC reporter has failed to apologise to Nigel Farage about a story claiming the former Ukip leader had been dropped by Royal bank Coutts because he had insufficient money in the account.
The corporation has amended the story online, with business editor Simon Jack confirming on Twitter that his original story had been ‘clarified’. Following intense pressure, the BBC admitted that information about public school educated Farage ‘turned out not to be accurate’.
The BBC was forced to respond after the Telegraph published contents of a dossier compiled by the 330-year-old bank which claimed Mr Farage’s account should be closed as his views ‘so not align with our values’.
Mr Jack said: ‘The headline on the Farage story has been clarified and an update posted. It should have been clearer at the top that the reason for Mr Farage’s account being closed was commercial - was what a source told the BBC. That has been corrected.’
The BBC added that part of its reporting was inaccurate in light of the new evidence, in a post on its webpage dedicated to corrections and clarifications.
It said: ‘We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts’ decision on Mr Farage’s account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate.’
Are you Russian? You seem to have difficulty understanding what the word “lying” means.
The BBC didn’t actively mislead.
They got answers from the NatWest group executives to the effect of, political beliefs aren’t a factor in PEPs having their accounts closed unless there is actually a known risk.
The subsequent investigation didn’t just prove the BBC take “turned out not to be accurate”, it proved that Coutts was doing its own thing when it was cancelling Farage.
‘We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts’ decision on Mr Farage’s account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate.’
That’s what NatWest have said too. There’s nothing in the Group rulebook that prevented Farage from banking with ANY firm in the Group. But individual firms inside the Group can have their own policies, and make their own judgements.
And Coutts are NOTORIOUSLY prissy. That’s why rich investment bankers, billionaires, public school educated toffs, the landed gentry and the extended Royal Family want to bank there.
Coutts keeps the oiks and assorted riff-raff out.
Their management thought that Farage is either an oik or is riff-raff.
I couldn’t care less. Other banks in the NatWest group are less prissy about riff-raff and oiks, so Farage could’ve banked there.
He’s massively butthurt because the prestige brand thought he was muck. That’s a cancel culture thing, but it’s LITERALLY been the sort of thing Coutts has done for over a century.
LOL! Are you a Neocon globalist? Because you use their standard tactics. You accuse anybody who disagrees with you of being “Russian” or “a tool of Putin” or any of the other standard ad hominem responses the Neocon warmongers use whenever they are questioned.
You are the one who seems not to understand what “lying” means. The Beeb had every reason to know that people have been and are being de-banked due to politics.
Instead of investigating that like one would expect of actual journalists, they acted as mere stenographers for the banks who just outright lied about it. That level of inaccuracy by the BBC is no mistake. It happens to perfectly fit their own political biases.
This isn’t just about Coutts. NINE other banks turned him down for an account - obviously not for commercial reasons. This has been happening with increasing frequency in recent years and even more suspiciously, it has been happening almost exclusively to people on one side of the political aisle.
This isn’t about Farage and whatever hurt feelings anybody speculates he may have. This is a much bigger issue. This is about a system of social credit scores, this is about censorship and targeting of political opponents and this is about the professional class establishment exerting a level of authoritarian control over society the like of which Britain has not seen in well over a century.....that’s a big story. Too bad Britain’s state run media refuses to cover it honestly.
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