FCA opens an internal review of how it handled a whistleblower it wrongly told had no protection

The mistake the FCA admitted concerned the first thing a whistleblower needs to know: whether the law covers them. Its staff told Andriesz he would not qualify for protection because his identity had become known, information the Guardian describes as misleading ^[5]. A whistleblower whose name is out is the one most exposed to reprisal. This summer Andriesz told the BBC's File on 4 Investigates that authorities in the US and UK had failed to protect him from potential retaliation ^[10].

The FCA's first remedy was aimed at one team ^[6]. The review goes further, and the FCA is running it itself ^[1]. "Since expressing our condolences, we'd asked Lea Paterson, who has just joined our board as a non-executive director, to review how we interacted with Mr Andriesz to learn any lessons for the future," an FCA spokesperson said ^[7].

The case for that choice is that a director who has just joined has no earlier decisions on the file to defend. The parliamentary group's objection is that the reviewer is still the FCA's own ^[8]. "It is vital that this time a truly independent and non-conflicted organisation carries out the work needed," said John McDonnell, the Labour MP who chairs the group ^[9]. Andriesz had also accused the FCA of mistreating whistleblowers, and described the toll whistleblowing had taken on his family, career and health ^[11].

For a board, the sequence in this case matters more than the merits. Andriesz raised accounting irregularities inside BGC in 2016 and was sacked a year later ^[12]. He then went outside, reportedly telling the FBI in 2020-21 that Lutnick had undeclared business ties with Epstein ^[4]. "BGC has long disputed Mr Andriesz's allegations but does not intend to relitigate these matters at this sad time," a BGC spokesperson said ^[13]. Once the internal route had ended in dismissal, the external one was what remained, and on the question of legal cover it gave him the wrong answer ^[5].

I think the case weakens any speak-up policy that treats sending staff to the regulator as the end of the firm's duty to them. The trade-off is between a policy line that costs nothing and advice that costs money. Naming the FCA as the outside route takes one sentence to write. Funding independent legal advice for staff who raise concerns has a price, and the firm does not control what that adviser says. The cheap option leaves an employee's grasp of their own protection to a channel that, in this case, got it wrong. A firm's choice this quarter shapes what its former staff might later tell MPs. "If the FCA refuses to respond positively, the APPG will consider all alternatives, including conducting its own call for evidence from whistleblowers who have interacted with the regulator," McDonnell said ^[9].

On this record the failure is documented in one case. The Guardian's account does not say whether other whistleblowers were given the same advice about identity, or when Paterson is due to report.