DyllisFaifeCoaching FRSA💙💚 أُعيد تغريده
THE MAN WHO SAW THE CRASH COMING GOT FIRED. THE MAN WHO CAUSED IT GOT A KNIGHTHOOD.
This actually happened. In the United Kingdom. Within living memory.
Paul Moore was Head of Group Regulatory Risk at Halifax Bank of Scotland. In 2004 he put it in writing. The lending was reckless. The sales culture was rotten. This bank was going to implode.
They fired him on 8 November 2004 and replaced him with a retail sales manager.
Let pause for a second.
The person whose job was to prevent a catastrophic banking collapse was replaced by someone who sells products to customers.
At one of the biggest banks in the UK.
In 2008 the bank collapsed.
The taxpayer bailout was £20.5 billion. Moore spent the years after his dismissal battling addiction, depression and suicidal episodes.
The man who was right about everything nearly died. The men who were wrong about everything kept their bonuses.
But here is the part that should make you put your phone down.
The FSA Deputy Chairman who resigned after Moore's @CommonsTreasury Select Committee evidence was Sir James Crosby. Crosby was the same man who fired Moore.
He had been CEO of HBOS while simultaneously sitting on the board of the regulator that was supposed to be watching HBOS. This was considered acceptable. By everyone.
Crosby eventually gave up his knighthood and part of his pension. Not one person was criminally prosecuted.
The FSA was then rebranded the FCA. Fresh start. New name.
@TheFCA board today includes former executives from ING Bank, EY, PwC and Willis Towers Watson.
The people regulating the financial industry are still the financial industry.
Same revolving door. Same conflict of interest.
No lessons were learnt.
Taxpayer money is still underwriting institutions that treat accountability as a PR problem.
Whistleblowers are still being fired, gagged and broken while the people they warned about negotiate their exit packages.
Paul Moore died in September 2020. He spent 16 years trying to make people care about what happened to him and to this country.
Nobody went to prison. Everyone moved on.
And the door kept spinning.
Sources:
@BBCNews
@guardian
@thetimes
@Channel4News
@TransparencyTF
English
