‘Mr Brexit’ Nigel Farage has accused the NatWest banking group and regulators of engaging in an “establishment stitch-up” by intentionally slow-walking investigations into his de-banking and the leaking of his details to the press.
In the wake of the revelation that Nigel Farage’s bank accounts were shut down for failing to “align” with the values of Coutts, the former UKIP leader has filed a second subject access request, demanding that NatWest release any other documents relating to his debanking on the suspicion that the move was discussed higher up the chain in the banking group.
While typically subject access requests are required to be met within a month, NatWest has claimed that the case is “complex” and therefore can take advantage of a two-month extension, meaning that further information about his debanking may not be revealed until late October.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Farage said: “The establishment are now clubbing together in an attempt to kick this as far into the long grass as they can. All of this now hinges on a report that could be many, many months away because no deadline has been set for it.”
Mr Farage has also called for a sit-down meeting with the interim chief executive of Coutts, Mohammed Kamal Syed, who replaced Dame Allison Rose after it was revealed that she had leaked the Brexit boss’s private banking details to the BBC. However, Syed has so far refused to agree to meet with Farage, claiming that an internal review must be completed first.
“I have asked for a meeting with Syed to find out what went wrong, to get an admission that they broke the law and to ask how many other people have had their accounts closed as a result of their political opinions. But they have just fobbed me off and said they are not going to do anything while the review is going on,” Farage said.
The GB News host went on to claim that he is a victim of an “establishment stitch-up”, with the City of London regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), refusing to open up its own investigation into Dame Alison’s alleged violations of data protection laws until the bank has finished its own internal review.
The review itself has also been called into question by Farage, given that it has been outsourced to the law firm Travers Smith. The law firm’s chair emeritus, Chris Hale, was an ardent opponent of the Brexit movement that Mr Farage led, describing the campaign to leave the European Union as “a disturbing mix of xenophobia, racism and nostalgia”.
A NatWest spokesman said: “As per normal process, where a subject access request is classified as ‘complex’ under the GDPR, an extension for responding to the request is applied.
“Our teams are working hard to provide responses, and customers and the ICO are being kept updated.”
Mr Farage has launched a campaign to form a “powerful group to lobby government” and represent those who have also been debanked by the increasingly woke financial system. Speaking to Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM Patriot earlier this month, the Brexit leader warned that the West could see the imposition of something akin to the Chinese social credit system, with lenders looking to begin monitoring the social media posts of their customers.
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