Failing Upwards: Bank Boss Ousted Over Farage Debanking Scandal Gets £2.4m Payout

Farage Rose
Getty Images / Collage
Oliver JJ Lane

Nigel Farage has slammed the “sick joke” of the “corrupt British establishment” as it is revealed a bank executive who resigned over the debanking scandal in which Mr Farage had his accounts withdrawn over his political views and personal life will now receive a considerable payout from her former employer.

A top bank boss who leaked and briefed against one of her own customers — Brexit leader Nigel Farage — in an apparent attempt to discredit his criticisms of her bank is to walk away with a bumper £2.4 million payout. Dame Alison Rose resigned her position — jumped before she was pushed, some observers caustically claimed at the time — in July after it was revealed she had spoken to the UK state broadcaster the BBC and given them inaccurate information about Mr Farage’s business with them, a serious breach of banking standards.

The resignation came just hours after the NatWest board said it still had full confidence in Rose. Despite admitting then she had made a “serious error of judgement”, it is now revealed she is to walk away with a serious pot of cash to cushion the blow. The Daily Telegraph reports Rose is “seeing out her 12-month notice period” and would receive her £1.15 million salary, £1.15 million in shares over the next five years, and £115,566 in pension contributions.

In all, the pay package for the disgraced banker even after her resignation announcement amounts to a cool £2.43 million. The bank said, per the report, that it was to review these payments depending on the outcome of an investigation into her conduct over the Farage debanking scandal, which has been a top UK political news story for weeks.

But Mr Farage himself rubbished the claim, pointing out that the investigation was already under question. He said the pay deal was a “sick joke” considering the rules and standards he said Rose had broken. He said in a video statement Wednesday afternoon: “The so-called inquiry into what she did has been kicked into the long grass and Sir Howard Davies, the chairman of NatWest Group seems happy about that.”

“This is the corrupt British establishment looking after its own, it is the corrupt British establishment at its very, very worst. Any employee of NatWest who had done what she did would have been out of the door, fired and would not even have received that month’s money. The whole thing is a sick joke.”

Since he was notified of the closure of his accounts with Coutts, an elite banking house which is part of the NatWest Group, Brexiteer Nigel Farage has been leading a new campaign against what has been coined ‘debanking’ in the United Kingdom. While he was the victim of an attempted debanking for nakedly political reasons, he has taken up the mantle for what he claims are thousands of Britons who have been denied accounts or had them closed because they are so-called ‘Politically Exposed Persons’, or because they had business dealings with cash.

Farage delivered a 300,000-signature petition to Downing Street last week demanding the government hold back the tide of the so-called cashless society. The Conservatives for their part have heralded new rules guaranteeing access to cash for individuals and businesses for a few decades more, but have yet to make concrete any new changes to banking regulations in response to Farage’s revelations.

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