Coutts gave Nigel Farage the boot as a customer because their reputation risk committee didn’t approve of his political views. But the decision has backfired spectacularly and has sparked one of the biggest crises in the bank’s 330-year history. The row shows no sign of dying down: last night, Nigel Farage appeared on BBC Newsnight to accuse the bank of behaving like a ‘political campaigning organisation’. He said:
‘Read the report, read the conclusions. They say Russia is a risk for them. They say my views do not align with the bank’s. How on earth a bank that is 40 per cent owned by the British taxpayer after their greedy incompetence led to us bailing them out I do not know. This bank are behaving now like a political campaigning organisation.’
Coutts said decisions to close an account ‘are not taken lightly’. But in Farage’s case, the bank certainly appears to have failed to do its homework.
It isn’t only Coutts which is facing questions over this story, however. The Daily Telegraph reports today that BBC business editor Simon Jack sat next to Dame Alison, the boss of Natwest that owns Coutts, at a swanky dinner at London’s Langham Hotel on 3 July. The next day, Jack published an exclusive story on the BBC website headlined: ‘Nigel Farage bank account shut for falling below wealth limit’. Jack and Alison have refused to say whether or not they discussed Farage during the dinner.
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