RBS accused of fraud and forgery by customers and ex-employee - Common practice in the factoring industry!

Former business clients of the Royal Bank of Scotland are accusing the bank of systematically manipulating documents to cover up wrong doing. 

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, a former RBS employee has come forward to support allegations of document manipulation within the bank.

RBS says it categorically denies document manipulation and forgery.

Mark Wright started working for NatWest Bank in 1988 and was still there in 2000 when it was taken over by RBS.

In 2005, Mr Wright accused two former RBS colleagues of concocting bogus complaints purportedly from five of his customers.

He says the employees were from the bank's Group Compliance Unit established to deter misconduct and malpractice in RBS. He referred to the unit as the bank's "police".

Mr Wright's five customers later submitted statements contradicting the bogus complaints. The two accused compliance staff subsequently left the bank.

---

RBS customers who allege wrongdoing

The BBC has spoken to a number of businessmen and financial advisers who allege document manipulation and forgery by RBS all of which allegations the bank denies.


Mr Wright told the BBC that the bank failed to properly investigate the complaints or accord him the status of whistle-blower.
"I had five individual customers who all came forward to me stating that the wording and conversations with this member of staff from group compliance were not their words, so effectively the telephone transcripts didn't reflect what the customer was saying."
Mr Wright said as a senior manager he had a duty to report the falsifications.
"I told my line manager this because he had been affected by the negative rating that Group Compliance had given me over these fictitious five customer complaints and falsifying the customer care calls so I decided to contact them all and the behaviour was the same with all five."

'I was suspicious'

Mr Wright said he learned later from colleagues that such misconduct was not uncommon in the bank's Compliance Unit.
"I discovered through a member of staff from Group Compliance that it would be common practice that they would falsify files if they needed to create a certain picture."
Mr Wright said he became increasingly concerned about the way the bank handled allegations of wrongdoing and had wanted a full external investigation because of the serious nature of his allegations.
"I was suspicious of wrong doing from 2005 to 2012," he said.
Mr Wright claims his standing within the bank suffered enormously as a result of his action.
His employment status within RBS was changed to "undesirable" when previously he had been classed as "excellent". Bonuses were also stopped.
In 2013 Mr Wright finally took redundancy after his GP diagnosed him with long term mental health issues. The bank upheld one of his grievances.
A RBS spokeswoman said the bank was aware of these concerns being raised previously and that they had been thoroughly investigated and responded to.
She denied there had been systematic document tampering at the bank.

Image caption MP Norman Lamb has concerns over the way Mr Wright's allegations have been treated

Mark Wright lives in the constituency of North Norfolk represented by former government minister, Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb. Mr Lamb said he has written to RBS five times to demand a meeting about Mr Wright's allegations.

How high did this go?

He said: "My fear is that it appears to be more than a few rotten apples behaving badly. There appears to be an institutional culture here that facilitated this corrupt practice. That's the allegation.
"And the way in which they dealt with a whistle-blower, who ought to actually be respected and treated with the utmost seriousness, instead they pushed him through a very long process, the wrong process."
Mr Lamb said: "Treating it as a grievance not going through the proper whistle-blowing process and allowing that individual to be destroyed rather that treating seriously the allegations that he raised and that for me begs the question. How high did this go? Did it go to the very top of the bank? And why are the current leadership not prepared to examine these really serious allegations thoroughly?"

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38984130