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Mr Habib, chief executive of commercial property investment and fund management company First Property Group, told Express.co.uk: \u201cIf NatWest thinks Alison Rose\u2019s resignation puts a line under their mistreatment of Nigel Farage, it is mistaken.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer resignation raises more questions than it answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bank had opted to \u201cadversely judge Nigel\u2019s virtue\u201d and backed its CEO in breaching data protection laws, Mr Habib claimed.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThe entire board of NatWest is culpable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Habib continued: \u201cThe Financial Conduct Authority, the regulator for NatWest, also has questions to answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is bound to be in close contact with the bank. Yet, it allowed a wholly unacceptable judgmental culture to develop and it was apparently blind to breaches of data protection laws.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut here is the real problem and the FCA is very likely part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs regulator, it would have required the bank to combat social injustice through the bank\u2019s obligation to abide by Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
As such, NatWest would have \u201cwrapped itself in a cloak of (false) virtue\u201d, Mr Habib suggested, entering its efforts on diversity and inclusion.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt promoted the drive to Net Zero and people from different ethnic minorities, religious backgrounds and sexual preferences even if doing so was to the detriment of their organisations and the exclusion of the ethnic majority.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did not matter that this may have been economically damaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommercial interests have now apparently become secondary to self-assessed declarations of virtue.\u201d<\/p>\n
In such a context, NatWest\u2019s executives had concluded they \u201cdid not like\u201d Mr Farage\u2019s views, Mr Habib argued.<\/p>\n
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Don’t miss… <\/strong> He added: \u201cThat is all it took for a law abiding and profitable customer of the bank to be cancelled. ESG has institutionalised woke at the cost of commercial and professional behaviour.<\/p>\n \u201cAs important as it is to hold NatWest to account, that would be far from sufficient. The entire regulatory framework for ESG and those that enforce it must be held to account.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement issued this morning, Dame Alison said: \u201cI recognise that in my conversations with Simon Jack of the BBC, I made a serious error of judgment in discussing Mr Farage’s relationship with the bank.<\/p>\n \u201cBelieving it was public knowledge, I confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and that he had been offered a NatWest bank account.\u201d<\/p>\n She added: \u201cAlongside this, I repeated what Mr Farage had already stated, that the bank saw this as a commercial decision. I would like to emphasise that in responding to Mr Jack’s questions I did not reveal any personal financial information about Mr Farage.<\/p>\n \u201cIn response to a general question about eligibility criteria required to bank with Coutts and NatWest I said that guidance on both was publicly available on their websites. In doing so, I recognise that I left Mr Jack with the impression that the decision to close Mr Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one.\u201d<\/p>\n NatWest’s board of directors announced that Paul Thwaite, the current chief executive of the company’s Commercial and Institutional business, will take over Dame Alison’s responsibilities for an initial period of 12 months, pending regulatory approval.<\/p>\n The board said in a statement that a further process to appoint a permanent successor will take place \u201cin due course\u201d.<\/p>\n City minister Andrew Griffith will meet Britain’s largest banks on Wednesday morning to address concerns related to customers’ \u201clawful freedom of expression\u201d.<\/p>\n NatWest shares fell by three percent after her announcement, while other banks also saw their shares hit amid calls from Mr Farage for wider \u201ccultural change\u201d across the entire sector, with Lloyds Banking Group down 3 percent despite a surge in half-year profits and Barclays dropping by more than one percent.<\/p>\n Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Nigel Farage said: \u201cIt took a long time for her to apologise and let’s get to the fundamentals of this.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first rule of banking is client confidentiality. She clearly broke that. She was the source of the leak and if anybody in a more junior position working at the NatWest Bank had done that, they would have been out the door.<\/p>\n \u201cYet we got this extraordinary statement that came at quarter to six last night that said ‘yes, she breached client confidentiality but we, the board, still have confidence in her’.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Humiliated Alison Rose sacked from two major Downing Street roles[LATEST] <\/strong><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cdn.images.express.co.uk\/img\/dynamic\/139\/590x\/secondary\/Ben-Habib-Brexit-4876643.jpg?r=1690378344874\")
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