Bankers at NatWest have been exposed for gloating and mocking Brexit boss Nigel Farage after his bank accounts were shut down, bragging that they had “single-handedly driven him out of the country”.
A subject access request has unearthed internal messages from employees at NatWest — which owns the Coutts bank that debanked Nigel Farage earlier this year for political reasons — hailing the decision to drop the populist politician.
Staff have been shown to characterised Mr Farage as an “awful human being” and “vile” as well as claiming that he had “dodgy Russian connections” — a debunked narrative that was popular among the pro-Remain establishment media during the 2016 EU Referendum.
Following his public disclosure that Coutts had shut down his accounts, one NatWest employee said per The Telegraph: “Have you all seen Nigel Farage’s Twitter? No one will bank him now. Have we single-handedly driven NF (Nigel Farage) out of the country?”
Then, after the BBC falsely reported that his accounts were solely shut down for financial reasons — a claim that emanated from former NatWest boss Dame Alison Rose, who resigned following the incident — another employee wrote: “Hope that knocked him down a peg or 2.”
Referencing a previous assault on the Brexit leader, another staff member said: “I’d throw a milkshake at him if I was approached to open an account for him.”
Perhaps most significantly, internal messages revealed that Mr Farage had not violated any rules or financial laws to necessitate Coutts dropping his account, with an email saying: “There’s no financial crime involved but his dealings are not within our appetite.”
Appearing to contradict that message, the person who was tasked with informing Farage of the account closures was told: “Keep it simple. Tell him you are calling to advise him that he will be receiving two letters to advise him that we can no longer provide banking services to him. If he asks why, say the bank made a commercial decision…”
Responding to the latest revelations of political bias, Mr Farage said: “These vile prejudicial comments are a direct result of the culture imposed upon NatWest by Dame Alison Rose.
“It is clear that the decision to debank me wasn’t taken just by the subdivision Coutts but went right up to the very top management team in the NatWest group.
“I find it wholly unacceptable that Alison Rose should be able to walk away from this fiasco with £11 million given that the British taxpayer owns nearly 40 per cent of the NatWest group.”
A spokesman for NatWest said: “We have written to Mr Farage to apologise sincerely for the deeply inappropriate comments made about him and the poor behaviours displayed. Neither are consistent with the standards of service that our clients should expect.”
The bank went on to say that phase one of an independent review has been conducted and that their findings should be made public shortly.
“We are determined to learn the necessary lessons from this so that in the future we live up to the high expectations our clients rightly place upon us,” the spokesman said.
Following his debanking, Farage launched a campaign to represent others in the UK who have been impacted by political banking. The Brexiteer is also waging a campaign to keep cash alive — in the face of Great Reset-style policies attempting to wipe out hard currency — delivering a petition signed by over 300,000 people to Downing Street in August.
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