Bank bosses have made a commitment to free speech, according to the government, in the wake of the Nigel Farage de-banking row that claimed the scalp of NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose.
On Wednesday afternoon the Information Commissioner’s Office announced it has written to banks to remind them of their “responsibility to the public”.
“Banks should not be holding inaccurate information, they should not be using information in a way that is unduly unexpected, and they should not be holding any more information than is necessary,” the Information Commissioner John Edwards said.
Dame Alison’s four-year tenure as chief executive ended in ignominy last night following her admission that she had discussed Mr Farage’s bank details with a BBC journalist, suggesting too that his account at the bank’s Coutts division had been closed only for commercial, rather than any political, reasons.
“Any suggestion that this trust has been betrayed will be concerning for a bank’s customers, and for regulators like myself,” Mr Edwards said.
Number 10 said Dame Alison had “done the right thing” by resigning and confirmed she was no longer a member of the prime minister’s business council. She has also left two roles she had with the department for energy after the secretary of state asked her to step down from both positions.
Treasury minister Andrew Griffith met 19 bank bosses for a summit on Wednesday to discuss concerns other figures, not just Mr Farage, were being denied access to banking due to their politics or perceived beliefs.
Mr Griffith said afterwards: “It’s not the job of banks to tell us what to think, or what political party we should support.
“The government’s been extremely clear on this, in a democracy that relies upon freedom of expression… that is not a legitimate thing for a bank to remove someone’s access to a bank account.”
A readout of the meeting’s conclusions suggested the industry had agreed to work with government and regulators on the implementation of new rules aimed at strengthening protections on account terminations or access to accounts.
“Attendees from the sector acknowledged that recent events had impacted upon public trust for the whole sector and expressed their clear commitment to government policy on account closure and to act quickly to restore confidence,” the document said.
Mr Farage told Sky News “the whole board needs to go” at NatWest following the resignation of Dame Alison.
The former Brexit campaigner said Sir Howard Davies, chairman of the NatWest Group, had continued to endorse Dame Alison even after it emerged she was the person who had leaked to the BBC.
Sky’s City editor Mark Kleinman suggested it was unlikely Sir Howard would follow her out of the bank despite intense pressure on his own position, saying it could even be prolonged beyond his planned departure next year given the search for Dame Alison’s successor and the need for stability at the top of the bank.
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‘Not necessary’ for entire NatWest board to go
“The first rule of banking is you have to obey client confidentiality. So they have made a complete and utter mess of this,” Mr Farage said, adding he had not decided whether he will seek compensation and the row over his account closure has “absorbed my life for many months”.
He said a subject access request from the NatWest Group revealed his account was “commercially viable” and its closure was a “political decision”.
The former UKIP leader also said he hadn’t been able to open another bank account and claimed he has been turned down by 10 banks.
Mr Farage also claimed he has been “approached by literally thousands of people all over this country that have been unfairly closed down by NatWest”.
NatWest’s shares were down by 4% following the news of Dame Alison’s resignation and were leading the fallers on the FTSE 100.
Image: Dame Alison had held her position as NatWest Group chief executive for four years
Mr Griffith earlier tweeted it is “right that the NatWest CEO has resigned”.
He added: “This would never have happened if NatWest had not taken it upon itself to withdraw a bank account due to someone’s lawful political views. That was and is always unacceptable.”
NatWest chairman says resignation is a ‘sad moment’
Sir Howard said earlier the board and Dame Alison agreed by “mutual consent” that she would step down from her role.
He said it was a “sad moment” and that Dame Alison has “dedicated all her working life so far to NatWest”.
In a statement, Dame Alison said: “I remain immensely proud of the progress the bank has made in supporting people, families and business across the UK, and building the foundations for sustainable growth.
“My NatWest colleagues are central to that success, and so I would like to personally thank them for all that they have done.”
The resignation was expected in the wake of briefings by Downing Street that she had lost the confidence of the prime minister and chancellor
Their concerns were echoed by Mr Farage, who accused the management of Coutts bank – which is owned by NatWest – of a “serious breach” and called Dame Alison’s position “totally untenable”.
The story first came to light when the BBC inaccurately reported Mr Farage’s account was closed as he did not meet Coutts’s financial thresholds.
Documents obtained by Mr Farage subsequently showed his political beliefs and connections formed part of the rationale.
Mr Farage told Sky News he has written to Peter Flavell, head of NatWest’s Coutts unit, “three times” since his account was closed and had not even had the “courtesy of an acknowledgement”.
Dame Alison had said she believed it was public knowledge Mr Farage was a customer of private bank Coutts and had been offered a NatWest account, and so confirmed these details to BBC business editor Simon Jack.
She later called her actions a “serious error of judgement” but reiterated the bank saw the account closure as a commercial decision and she was not part of the decision-making process.
On Monday, the BBC apologised for the report, following earlier apologies from both Coutts and Dame Alison.
Paul Thwaite, the current chief executive of the company’s commercial and institutional business, was announced as an interim chief executive, for an initial period of 12 months, pending regulatory approval.
The board said a process to appoint a permanent successor will take place in due course.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,”OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.
Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”
“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.
Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph
Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.
Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue
Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.
US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas
The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”
Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.