Whistleblower’s death leads to day of reckoning for UK regulator

Image: Ana Flávia @anafsnt via Unsplash

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) came under intense scrutiny at its public annual meeting held in Edinburgh this week for its treatment of whistleblowers bringing allegations of wrongdoing and retaliation following the suicide of Epstein whistleblower Simon Andriesz.

Andriesz had uncovered what he described as shady dealings by Wall Street brokerage BGC Group, run by Howard Lutnick before he was appointed US commerce secretary, and business links between Lutnick and Epstein. He repeatedly raised his concerns with the FCA, and sought assistance and protection from the financial watchdog for what he regarded as retaliation from BGC after his whistleblowing led to fines being imposed on the company in the US, but little action was taken.

In 2023 the FCA also wrongly told him he no longer qualified for legal protections under the Public Interest Disclosure Act once he gave permission for his name to be disclosed to his former employer. The FCA later apologised to Andriesz, but only after it was alerted to the mistake by Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.  

The FCA’s decision to appoint one of its own non-executive directors to investigate its mishandling of the case led to heated exchanges, and calls for the regulator’s chairperson Ashley Alder to resign. A cross-party group of MPs said Andriesz’s death raised “deeply troubling questions” about how whistleblowers who report wrongdoing and retaliation to the FCA are treated. They called for an external inquiry, saying the regulator should not be allowed to “mark its own homework”.

Simon Andriesz had worked for decades in finance in the City of London before joining the Wall Street brokerage in 2012. BGC Partners, as it was called then, was part of global financial services group Cantor Fitzgerald. At the time both companies were run by Howard Lutnick.

Andriesz, who was responsible for London, New York and Chicago, and a senior signatory for regulatory reporting and compliance, came across numerous alleged accounting irregularities, which he reported internally in 2016. The following year he was fired, allegedly in retaliation for blowing the whistle.

In July this year, Andriesz told a whistleblower event hosted by the campaign group Transparency Task Force that among the irregularities and regulatory breaches he discovered was that the company was allegedly embezzling money from the broker commission pool. He said he refused regulatory sign-off on accounts he regarded as false.

BGC has told various media outlets that Andriesz’s allegations were “categorically false”. The company denied it had committed embezzlement or retaliated against him, describing him as a former employee with an “axe to grind”.

After his departure, he reported his concerns to the authorities in the US and the UK. According to the Financial Times, the information he provided helped regulators take action against the company. This included being fined US$3 million by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC ) for “numerous supervision, reporting and record-keeping violations”, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission imposing a US$1.4 million fine in settlement of alleged “false and misleading disclosures”.

Andriesz also told the FBI that Lutnick had undisclosed business ties with Epstein. Andriesz’s subsequent disclosures of emails led to Lutnick being grilled by the US Congress’s main investigations body, the House Oversight Committee.

Andriesz subsequently told the BBC’s File on 4 Investigates that both the US and UK authorities had failed to hold BGC and its parent company properly accountable, or protect him from retaliation.

At the Transparency Task Force event he described how blowing the whistle – and the UK regulator’s failure to take action – had exacted a heavy toll on his health, and his personal and financial wellbeing. The FCA merely “pays lip service” to its regulatory obligations to protect whistleblowers, he told the gathering.  

“If they’d take the action they should have, and upheld their rules and regulations, then I would have already won. But they didn’t do anything,” he said. “They protected the firm over the whistleblower, who has been vindicated by other regulators. It’s an absolute disgrace. It has completely devastated my life.”

Two months later, on 23 September, Andriesz took his own life. His family said there was no suggestion of foul play.