24 MARCH 2022, LONDON, UK – A former employee of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), responsible for the overseeing the financial regulation and conduct of thousands of financial services firms including banks, insurers, and investment companies - as well as being a proscribed body for whistleblowers within the financial services industry - is taking the City watchdog to court claiming unfair dismissal.

Walker Sigismund, a former Risk Advisory manager at the FCA, made a number of protected disclosures to the authority including the under capitalisation of certain banks in the run up to the 2008 crash, as well as allegations of consumers being overcharged by peer to peer lending firms. Sigismund was made redundant and dismissed from his role in 2018. In the UK it is illegal to cause a whistleblower any detriment including dismissal under employment and public interest disclosure laws.
It is almost a year since the UK’s financial services regulator launched a campaign to encourage industry whistleblowers to come forward and expose both financial and non-financial misconduct within regulated firms, promising to beef up whistleblowing resources as well as providing protection. The trial Mr W Sigismund v Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority continues at London South Employment Tribunal.

Protect is the UK’s whistleblowing charity and aim to stop harm by encouraging safe whistleblowing. Protect also conducts research, informs public policy and campaigns for better legal protection of whistleblowers. Protect was the first whistleblowing charity in the UK to help whistleblowers. Since 1993, when we formed, they have handled 45,000 cases, and its Advice Line supports more than 3,000 whistleblowers each year.

Links

Web: https://protect-advice.org.uk
Email: [email protected] ; [email protected]