NatWest, Farage and the decline of corporate behaviour

The story of NatWest Group’s rogue behaviour goes far deeper than Nigel Farage. It now emerges that many more customers have been de-banked, had their lives turned upside down, and businesses destroyed as a result of a rogue and rotten culture affecting the financial system.

Take Baz Melia, army veteran and decorated war hero. The consulting business he started upon leaving the military could not function after NatWest closed his account. They wouldn’t tell him why and his paid work dried up as result. Or Alexandra Tolstoy, a single mother of three, whose only crime appears to be guilt by association with a former partner from Russia.  

None of these people, or indeed the many others, ever had a chance to defend themselves. It has been a principle of English law for nearly a thousand years that if accused of a crime, you have a right to know what for, and to a defence.