Disgraced CEO at Heart of Farage Debanking Scandal Loses £7.5 Million Payout

The bank boss who lost her job over her behaviour during the Nigel Farage debanking scandal is set to lose most, but not all of her £10 million-plus payout as Natwest Group concludes she could not be justly considered a “good leaver”.

Dame Alison Rose, who resigned from her post as CEO of the partially state-owned NatWest bank in July after her role in the Nigel Farage debanking scandal will receive £2.4 million in pay and £850,000 in shares following her departure, the bank has decided. She forfeited £7.6 million including other shares and lost annual performance bonus.

The decision was reached after a UK government watchdog found NatWest did break the law over the process and actions it took during the debanking of Brexit leader Nigel Farage, who was deprived of both his personal and business bank accounts at NatWest-group bank Coutts. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found Rose revealed sensitive personal financial information about Mr Farage, and also gave the journalist “misleading information” about him by claiming the account was being closed for purely commercial reasons, an assertion which was later proven false.

Responding to the news of Dame Alison’s fate, Brexit leader Farage said it was “correct and right” that she should not be rewarded for failure, but nevertheless said the story was not yet over. He said: “She still walks away with around £2.5 million, so don’t feel too sorry for her.

“This is not the end of the NatWest saga. I have instructed lawyers today to take action against the NatWest Bank for what they’ve done, for their breach of confidence, for their lying. And I’m going to make, if I possibly can, a class action against the bank. They can’t go on as they have done.”

While NatWest initially claimed it had removed Mr Farage’s banking facilities due to a commercial decision, it was later proven through freedom of information releases that this was a lie, and the decision had been reached for political reasons. It was subsequently also revealed in released internal bank communications how staff gloated over and celebrated the debanking of the political campaigner.

Staff called Farage an “awful human being” and “vile”, and celebrated that: “No one will bank him now. Have we single-handedly driven NF (Nigel Farage) out of the country?”.

One of the major outcomes of the scandal is the revelation of the extent to which debanking was already a feature of life in the United Kingdom, even if it was a largely unspoken one, with “nearly one million” accounts shut in the past four years. Many if not most were reluctant to go public when they had been debunked prior to Mr Farage going to the media with his situation, it was said, because of the shame associated with being without a bank account, and fear that making this public knowledge could impact an individual’s chances of getting an account in future.