TTF Blog: 04 July 2021

by Alex Varley-Winter, TTF’s Head of Media Relations & Investigative Reporting

Distressed borrowers have joined with the man who elevated Operation Hornet, to accuse the National Crime Agency of moving its goal-posts to avoid investigating longstanding claims of ‘industrial-scale’ forgery.

This comes in spite of the fact that MPs have repeatedly asked the NCA to ‘investigate as appropriate’ claims of fraud and invalid documentation.

The agency is currently at loggerheads with complainants alleging signature forgery or invalid documentation  by staff in a range of institutions. These include historic claims against staff in two major banks (RBS and HBOS/Lloyds).

“The serious charge, which the NCA is refusing to investigate, is signature forgery and the use of deliberately invalid documentation, including in court”, the Banking Action Network alleges, and adds: “Following a meeting between the Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner, the Bank Signature Forgeries Campaign (BSFC) and Mr Biggar [of the NECC] in March, the former [Mr Stansfeld] concluded that the NCA and NECC have no intention of investigating* the matter further.”

*Interestingly, the use of the word ‘investigating’ here was rejected by the NCA, when TTF Blog approached them this week, with these allegations.

The NCA, for its side, has never opened an investigation but is instead still “assessing” the claims in its National Economic Crime Centre. This is a point of deep frustration for complainants who want the documents scrutinised with a view to bringing charges.

24 files ‘assessed’

The National Crime Agency’s Economic Crime Centre has so far received 24 files containing 639 individual crime reports of alleged signature forgery or use of invalid documents, from the Bank Signature Forgery Campaign.

As one complainant observes: “The NCA acts with commendable haste over county lines drug dealing”, a devastating organised crime. Why does the agency not apply the same rigour to allegations of signature forgery?

Such cases – as with identity thefts – may not only result in destitution for targeted clients. If forged documents pass into the court, this can undermine the perceived integrity of the civil court, a corrosion of its purpose.

Smash and grab

If some lenders actually stooped to crime for the purpose of asset-stripping, that is a major scandal. It is nested, though, within a far wider, acknowledgement by banking experts that unethical targeting of customers to boost profits was normalised.

Peter Crawley, who authored the book ‘How Banks Weaponised Lending’, reminded participants at a TTF Symposium this week that mis-selling has often been done “recklessly and with the wicked intent of smashing up those businesses“. TTF founder Andy Agathangelou told MoneyMarketing that he believes banks are ‘getting away with the lot’ because of their financial and lobby power.

Moving the goal, or an own-goal?

From fraud claimants’ perspective even law enforcement has, so far, moved the goal-posts away from the documents in front of them.

In its press release, the Banking Action Network alleged that the NCA has been trying to assess an even more serious charge (“collusion”) – and that this was not even alleged by the Bank Signature Forgery Campaign, which has all the documents at its disposal.

Why on earth would the cops bother with an allegation that has not been made by fraud claimants themselves? Is this hamming up the claims to discredit the campaign? If so, the complainants are having none of it.

The anti-fraud cop behind Operation Hornet

Mr Anthony Stansfeld is an ex- Police Crime Commissioner formerly behind the highly successful ‘Operation Hornet’ prosecution of bankers in HBOS Reading in the mid-2010s. As a persistent campaigner for better fraud investigation, he is  familiar with some of the hundreds of pages of documents underlying Bank Signature Forgery claims. He argues that there is “irrefutable evidence” to investigate.

Distressed campaigners

William May, of the Banking Action Network, told TTF Blog yesterday that in his view this “continues to be disgusting, totally biased policing.” He is not a dispassionate observer but himself a fraud claimant turned campaigner, currently facing possession proceedings.

May alleges: “The NCA first received evidence of signature forgery and the use of deliberately invalid legal documentation in July 2019. It is now two full years later and they are ‘continuing to assess’, despite having received 639 individual crime reports and 24 files of evidence”.

As an NCA spokesperson confirmed to TTF Blog on Friday:  “We are continuing to assess [TTF Blog’s emphasis] the material submitted by the Bank Signature Forgery Campaign and information obtained following preliminary enquiries.”

The aim of this NCA assessment is: “to clarify matters with certain members of the public who had raised the issue. We are making a thorough assessment to determine whether there are grounds for a criminal or regulatory investigation.”

May is unimpressed by the suggestion that this might be passed to the FCA as a ‘regulatory’ matter. He argues: “If you or I were apprehended forging signatures on an industrial scale, guess what kind of charges we would be facing?”

639 un-investigated claims

Claims of bank signature forgery and invalid documentation, were given broad exposure last year by Nicholas Wilson, a former HSBC whistleblower who now campaigns for wider accountability in finance.

He  distributed a short documentary about the claims online. His film features, among other figures, Steve Middleton a consultant who has supported other banking whistleblowers, alleging some staff were taught to forge signatures during their training: “They were taught it was the right thing to do, that it was in the customers’ interests…” Middleton commented. 

Another allegation was previously covered by investigative journalist Ian Fraser in his book Shredded: Inside RBS —  that the ‘common joke’ at Broadland Business Park that “all the best business was done at the photocopier” – that this simple method was used to duplicate signatures between documents.

Trail to the FCA

Another banking whistleblower Mark Wright – interviewed by the BBC here –   has also publicly alleged that former RBS staff had carried out ‘systemic’ forgery.

He went on to tell Wilson that he alerted Andrew Bailey, then head of the FCA, to the name of an alleged trainer in signature forgeries. He alleged that Bailey refused to meet whistleblowers on that matter. Andrew Bailey is now governor of the Bank of England, but he continues to attract criticism for how he handled tip-offs and complaints in his former role.

The FCA remains under heated scrutiny from beleaguered borrowers, whistleblowers, and scam victims.  We are seeing increasing pressure for the FCA’s approach to consumers to change.

Tomorrow, Transparency Task Force is hosting a Symposium on the Financial Conduct Authority and whether it should impose a ‘Duty of Care’ on financial services firms towards their customers. You can sign up here.