Dame Alison Rose admitted to being the BBC’s source for a story that revealed personal banking information about conservative broadcaster Nigel Farage.
The CEO of a major British bank has resigned after admitting to leaking the private banking information of high-profile conservative broadcaster Nigel Farage to the BBC after he was “de-banked” for his political views.
Dame Alison Rose, the CEO of NatWest Group, revealed on Tuesday that she had briefed the British state broadcaster about Farage’s private banking arrangements after the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader went public about a decision made by an unnamed bank to close his accounts and withdraw their services.
After Farage went public with the story and claimed the decision to debank him was politically motivated, the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack published a story that not only named the prestigious Coutts bank, a part of NatWest Group, as the bank in question, but cited an anonymous source who suggested that Farage’s accounts had been closed due to him falling below the minimum balance required to remain a customer.
“People familiar with Coutts’ move said it was a ‘commercial’ decision,” Jack wrote, publishing a quote from his source that stated: “The criteria for holding a Coutts account are clear from the bank’s website. Coutts requires its customers to borrow or invest at least £1 million with the bank or hold £3 million in savings.”