(LifeSiteNews) — Brexit leader Nigel Farage has announced the start of a new initiative to fight the “de-banking” of U.K. citizens after a dossier showed that his financial accounts were canceled for his political views.
“I will be launching, over the course of the next few days, an exercise designed to gather together all of those that have been de-banked,” Farage wrote in a piece published by The Telegraph.
“I’m hoping to build a very large database of cases to find out which banks are the worst offenders and what the commonest reasons are, so that we can prepare and present a lobby to ministers, and to Parliament, in order to achieve fundamental change.”
Farage was recently de-banked by the private bank Coutts for his political views, according to a dossier he acquired through a Subject Access Request.
The former politician stated that NatWest, the group that owns Coutts, “has morphed into a woke warrior” that is “obsessed with public displays of political correctness rather than focusing on the business of managing and making money.”
“Banks should not be and must never become political organizations,” he added.
“Sadly, a bank account being closed at short notice has made it almost impossible for many people to get a new account opened in time,” Farage noted. “Some people have been ruined as a result. This is especially true of small business owners who take cash payments, whether they run a local window cleaning firm or a pawn broker.”
“This is especially true of small business owners who take cash payments, whether they run a local window cleaning firm or a pawn broker. Not having a bank account in the 21st century makes it almost impossible to function. Any bank employee who has allowed such a state of affairs to exist should have this on their conscience.”
“Now, I intend to be their voice and to campaign for the cultural and legal changes that our banking system needs,” Farage announced.
Farage said that he has been in contact with numerous others in the U.K. who have been de-banked. He encouraged them to make a Subject Access Request (SAR), to find out why they were canceled by their bank. Under the U.K.’s General Data Protection Regulation, every citizen has the right to receive all personal information an organization has about them by submitting a SAR.
The former leader of the UKIP (U.K. Independence Party) stressed that de-banking could happen to many more people in the future if nothing is done to oppose the trend.
“It might be said that the cultural problem within our banks has, so far at least, only affected a small proportion of the population,” Farage said. “But if these institutions continue to believe they can become moral arbiters, monitoring the social media profiles of account holders, the numbers affected will quickly grow. Our current rulebook, backed up by aggressive compliance departments, has proved to be a sledgehammer that has missed the nut. It isn’t money launderers but innocent people who are paying the price. It simply cannot continue.”
“I will be asking people out there to come and join me. Let’s fight this,” he concluded.
The timeline of the Nigel Farage de-banking scandal
In June, it was made public that Farage’s bank accounts at the private bank Coutts had been shut down without proper explanation. The former UKIP leader claimed that his accounts were shut down for “political” reasons and he warned about “the ultimate form of tyranny” that could form in a cashless society, where banks would have the ability to control people’s access to money.
The BBC tried to rebut Farage’s claim that the closure of his bank accounts was politically motivated. The network published a story, in which they claimed that a “source familiar with Coutts’ move” had told them that Farage’s accounts were closed because he fell below the threshold that is required to bank at Coutts. The prestigious bank requires customers to hold at least £3m in savings or invest or borrow at least £1m with Coutts.
Farage was set to debunk the BBC report and submitted a SAR to Coutts to find out why they had really de-banked him. The bank sent Farage a 40-page dossier, which was published by the Daily Mail and showed that the former UKIP leader was indeed canceled for his political views.
The bombshell document revealed that Coutts decided to shut down Farage’s accounts because they “did not think continuing to bank” Farage “was compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organization.”
Some of the views that Coutts found unacceptable were Farage’s continued support for former U.S. President Donald Trump and his friendship with the unvaccinated tennis superstar Novak Djokovic. The dossier also named his opposition to “net zero” policies, and a retweet of a “transphobic” comedy sketch by British comedian Ricky Gervais as problematic. The document furthermore claimed that Farage is “xenophobic and racist.”
At the same time, the authors of the Coutts dossier admit that Farage’s “economic contribution” was “sufficient to retain on a commercial basis.”
Following the publication of the dossier, multiple ministers expressed their concern over Coutts’s methods and backed Farage. After Farage publicly accused NatWest CEO Dame Alison Rose of leaking the inaccurate information about his personal finances to the BBC, Rose had to admit that the accusations were correct and resign from her position.
The BBC then publicly apologized to Farage “over its inaccurate report about why his account at Coutts bank was closed.”
At last, Coutts CEO Peter Flavel stepped down as well, citing Farage’s case as the reason for his resignation.
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