Last week on 27th March 2023 the UK Government announced a review of the UK Whistleblower regime.
Coincidentally March 2023 also represents eight years since I first escalated my protected 'Whistleblower' disclosures to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA is the regulator of banks and financial firms & services, including my previous employer, Lloyds Banking Group (LBG).
It is fair to say that in the intervening eight years my 'whistleblower journey' has involved just about every problem or obstacle that a UK whistleblower faces, including many that were and are inconceivable. This article is the first of several that will depict that journey and the most recent step I've been forced to take. An application for a Judicial Review based upon disturbing new information and evidence only recently obtained, that exposes not only The FCA but the Complaints Commissioner and the Information Commissioner (ICO).
Information and evidence that was unlawfully withheld from me previously by The FCA in 2016, and that the Complaints Commissioner also sought to unlawfully conceal in 2022.
The FCA's role includes multiple and various functions, responsibilities and duties that are defined by various law. This includes the Financial Services & Markets Act (FSMA) and also the likes of the Fraud Act 2006, UK Data Protection & GDPR and the Human Rights Act.
IMPORTANTLY, The FCA also has various statutory duties and obligations bestowed upon it by PIDA (Public Interest Disclosure Act). For those that might not know of PIDA, this is essentially the UK's 'Whistleblower' law.
Broadly, it is the law that prohibits detriment to an employee that 'blows the whistle' when they make a protected 'whistleblower' disclosure in respect to conduct or actions that they 'reasonably believe' represent a breach of Law, Regulatory Code or their employer's policies.
Here is how 'Protect', the UK Whistleblower Charity describe the duties bestowed upon The FCA as a designated 'Prescribed Person'.
(Extract from the website of 'Protect')
[Please don't mistake this as an endorsement of 'Protect'. They, and their former incarnation 'Public Concern At Work' (PCAW) (the self-proclaimed foremost UK Whistleblower organisation) played a significant and damaging role in my case, and must bear a substantial responsibility for the ongoing and prevailing failures within the UK Whistleblower regime.]
However, Part 1 of this Whistleblower Journey focuses on The FCA's role and conduct.
The FCA obliged myself and every employee working within banking and financial services, to raise concerns ['blow the whistle'] in the event that we had reason to believe that breaches of Law, Regulatory Code or policies were being breached, and assured all that if we do then we will have protection.
It is also important to understand that The FCA treats anyone that is discovered to have been aware of such conduct and failed to raise concerns, as guilty as those committing the offences in question.
I had made a series of protected disclosures between 2012 and 2014 whilst employed by LBG, or at least what I was told by the bank and the bank whistleblower policy [and Protect/PCAW's model whistleblower policy] were 'protected disclosures', only to discover that Employment Tribunal case law entirely contradicts this policy and what I was told, and also rather contradicts PIDA also.
For the record several whistleblowers that followed my specific guidance on this issue, that I learned the hard way, have gone on to secure substantial remedy [£1million plus] when they were subsequently the victim of detriment by their employer for having made their disclosures. A female former colleague also secured a substantial settlement having followed my guidance when she was clearly the victim of sexual discrimination by her employer.
Begging the question as to why no regulator or 'Protect/PCAW' or employer are providing the same guidance. Which is essentially highlighting the Tribunal Case law and what it determines a disclosure MUST include for it to be 'protected', none of which features in the Whistleblower Policies.
For the purpose of this series, I am going to focus only on one of the disclosures I made:
"The attempt by two Lloyds Banking Group sales people to defraud Tesco on 1st July 2014, and the subsequent fraud against me by the Bank and the bank employee in the Group Security & Fraud department by way of the falsifying of findings from their 'investigation' of this disclosure."
Please understand that as extraordinary as this part of the journey that applies to this specific disclosure is, it is a fraction of the whole story.
For the record and avoidance of doubt I publish these documents in their entirety as part of my obligations under PIDA. If your employer and subsequently the Prescribed Persons fail to deal with your disclosures properly or appropriately, then you are obliged to publish them in the public interest. Notwithstanding that last week I gave both The FCA and Charlie Nunn, Lloyds Banking Group CEO, the opportunity to contest any party of these proposed publications and therefore the naming of persons involved. Neither responded within the afforded time to raise any objection.
Letter Before Action for Judicial Review
In May and June of 2022, I obtained a substantial cache of internal FCA documents dated 2015 and 2016 in response to a DSAR (Data Subject Access Request) submitted to the Complaints Commissioner in April 2022.
More than two hundred of which had never been disclosed to me by The FCA, and despite them purporting to have disclosed all of my personal information they held in February 2017 in response to a DSAR.
All of them to some or significant extent exposed representations made by The FCA in Complaint Responses that they sent to me in December 2016, February 2021 and June 2022 as entirely dishonest.
However, and furthermore, the substantial number of documents within this cache that The FCA had disclosed to me in February 2017 in response to that DSAR, were now proven to have been redacted to a significantly unlawful extent. Information that was clearly my personal information had been deliberately and unlawfully redacted by The FCA.
In November 2022 I submitted a new complaint to The FCA specific to the various and multiple false representations they had made to me in their June 2022 Complaint response, and that also referred to and relied upon prior FCA representations, now also proven dishonest by the new evidence. Indeed, each FCA complaint response since 2016 referred to and relied upon representations made in prior complaint responses, furthering and repeating that dishonesty also.
The November 2022 complaint was entirely new, and based entirely upon the new information and evidence I had just obtained. Therefore qualifying as 'eligible' under the terms of The FCA Complaints Scheme.
On 26th January 2023, and only after my MP Laura Trott, was forced to write to The FCA for failing to acknowledge and respond to the complaint initially, did The FCA finally provide their complaint response. The FCA response was total nonsense.
Therefore, and after similar 'decisions' from the other public bodies named, on 3rd March 2023 I sent a Letter Before Action to The FCA, the Complaints Commissioner and the Information Commissioner, in respect to my making an application for a Judicial Review.
DOCUMENT 1 - A copy of my Letter Before Action (LBA) here:
As you can see, the LBA includes the three Respondents mentioned and:
Alleges various and multiple breaches of statutory duties and obligations by all three, both independently and also by way of collusion between them.
Alleges that all three have breached the rights afforded me by the various relevant law.
Alleges that all three by way of the above did deprive me of the FREE 'Honest & Objective' oversight and review and, if appropriate, resolution and remedy, that I was afforded by the various and relevant law, and that they all had a statutory duty and obligation to provide.
Alleges that all three by way of the above intended to exhaust all of the rights to FREE 'Honest & Objective' oversight and review and, if appropriate resolution and remedy, with intent to avoid accountability, leaving me only the option of hugely expensive civil litigation that all three Respondents knew that I [or anyone] can afford.
Alleges that all three by way of the above intended to further reduce the opportunity of being held accountable via civil action by 'engineering' costs scenarios that they would seek to leverage so as to prevent any proceedings being brought against them.
Importantly, and for the record, whilst the outcomes/decisions to complaints provided by these public bodies are challenged by me, the LBA is entirely specific to the way in which all three public bodies handled, contrived and produced these responses and NOT the decisions themselves.
The above is not unique to me or my case. Ask anyone, be it whistleblower or victim of financial crime or wrongdoing, and who has availed themselves of the various statutory duties & obligations of these public bodies, and these rights afforded us all by the various and relevant law, what their experience has been like and if it differs in any way from that which is described in this saga.
Access to Justice in the UK no longer exists for the vast majority.
(Indeed, I remind you all that The FCA is actually being sued by an APPG, a group of UK MP's who are 'UK Lawmakers' for acting unlawfully in respect to the IRHP Review they launched in 2012. This despite John Swift KC, the former Judge that The FCA themselves appointed to run the 'Independent Investigation' in to the IRHP review, deeming them to have acted unlawfully.)
The FCA were the only one of the three Respondents of the LBA who failed to respond within the 14 days prescribed by CPR (Civil Procured Rules), by Friday 17th March. Both the Complaints Commissioner and the Information Commissioner acknowledged that this was the date by which they were bound to respond. The FCA once again being a law unto themselves.
The FCA Response to my Letter Before Action
However, on Monday 20th March at 3:41pm I received an email and letter out of the blue from The FCA Complaints team.
DOCUMENT 2 - Copy of that Letter from The FCA Complaints team here:
The FCA Complaints Team were formally 'withdrawing' the Complaint Response that they had sent me on 26th January 2023 in response to my new complaint made in November 2022, and issuing a 'replacement' decision. They also acknowledged that the 26th January complaint response was referenced in my LBA dated March 3rd.
The letter, after eight years of lies, concealment and unlawful acts by The FCA, now sought to go a step further and 're-write' history!
However, it was not immediately clear what they were up to and why.
I did not have to wait long for that 'clarity'.
Thirty four minutes later at 4:15pm, I received the formal response to my LBA from The FCA GCD (Group Counsel Department).
Astonishing!
DOCUMENT 3 - A copy of the formal response to my LBA from The FCA Group Counsel Department (GCD)
(I have not included the reply I produced and sent to the Complaints Commissioner that I refer to in this reply to The FCA and was included as Appendix A. I will be producing separate parts of this 'journey' specific to the Complaints Commissioner and the Information Commissioner and will publish it in that piece.)
This response produced by FCA GCD as part of their duties under Civil Procedure Rules, not only fails to provide any information or explanation in response to the various allegations & supporting evidence I presented in my LBA, but they dishonestly and unlawfully re-write and falsify the facts and so as to falsify the chronology and narrative with intent to deny and avoid that responsibility and accountability.
(Screenshot of the obligations bestowed on a public body as part of 'Pre-Action protocols' for a Judicial Review)
Let us not forget that The FCA GCD is populated by hundreds of qualified solicitors and barristers. There can be no 'mistake' or incompetence. This is pre-meditated dishonesty by the FCA's in house legal team, compounding multiple counts of prior dishonesty by The FCA, and taking the FCA's conduct to a whole new level.
This was sent to me, a 'non-represented' third party with no legal qualifications, as part of legal proceedings. This represents perjury. A criminal offence, not to mention a breach of Solicitors Regulation Authority code of conduct, particularly those in respect to obligations to act lawfully and honestly, when dealing with 'non-represented third parties'.
I produced a detailed reply to this FCA response to my LBA, dissecting each and every disturbing and/or false representation and position made and put forward by The FCA.
DOCUMENT 4 - My detailed reply to the response to my LBA produced by The FCA GCD.
I urge everyone to read all of the documents included within this article, but particularly this letter to The FCA. If the breaches of statutory duties and obligations, unlawful conduct and breaches of rights afforded me by law that I included within my LBA were not numerous enough, this letter exposes whole new depths of dishonesty that The FCA will stoop to so as to avoid accountability for prior failures and the multiple counts of prior dishonesty with intent to conceal those failures.
And to be very clear, all of this is the latest in the eight years of failures, dishonesty and gaslighting abuse that I have suffered at the hands of The FCA having 'blown the whistle' just as they compelled me to do.
I include below key extracts from my reply.
Please note that I have included significant detail below. The purpose of which is so that this and the subsequent other parts of my 'Whistleblower Journey' that I will be publishing, will also form part of the significant records that I will be submitting to the new Government Review of the UK Whistleblower Regime.
In response to FCA attempts to introduce costs as leverage:
2. I refer you to the utter dismissiveness within the Complaints Commissioner’s response, and refer you to your own utter dismissiveness of the allegations within my LBA, and accept this as an understanding by both parties that they believe this application for a Judicial Review being brought by a non-represented litigant in person with no legal qualifications, can therefore easily be dealt with by any one of the FCA’s 230+ [According to Law Society records] full time solicitors it employees. This does not include the numerous solicitors within The FCA not registered on the Law Society website or any of the numerous barristers the FCA employs on a full time basis that are not registered on the Law Society pages.
2.1. The FCA pays this army of qualified legal personnel full time wages, and to deal with various issues including claims such as this brought against The FCA. If they are not qualified for this task and not able to deal with this Judicial Review brought by a litigant in person, what is The FCA employing them for, and paying them substantial remuneration for?
2.2. It is my position that your threats of costs referred to in your letter is little more than an intent to create needless costs so as to generate leverage upon which to make these threats, with no intent other than to avoid exposure of the various offences detailed within my LBA, and avoid accountability for them by preventing them from being subject to the honest and objective review that the Judicial Review would finally provide, but that the FCA and the other named parties failed to provide despite statutory obligations to do so and without cost to me.
2.3. Indeed, you claim in your letter that the FCA is a public funded body and it is my position that the FCA cannot justify use of those public funds when it has more than sufficient ‘already paid for' legal expertise, and so as to conceal the various offences listed within my LBA that the FCA has committed so as to avoid accountability and to deprive me of the various rights afforded me by various laws, and particularly the right to avail myself of the FREE processes that must provide honest and objective review and oversight.
2.4. I also refer you to this response to my LBA which fails to provide any information in respect to any of the issues raised within my LBA, and therefore represents no attempt to resolve these issues prior to the need for a Judicial Review, as per the purpose of an LBA. You cannot justify pursuit of costs and seek to leverage them when any lawful and CPR compliant response to my LBA would have perhaps mitigated the need for me to pursue the Judicial Review. Further evidence as to then intent to avoid accountability and to leverage unnecessary costs.
In response to FCA attempts to engineer false interpretations of the issues:
In your response to my LBA of 3rd March 2023, you seek to establish various interpretations under the heading of ’The Details of the matter being challenged’.
4. I believe that my allegations and the issues to which my LBA is quite specific, are quite clearly expressed and established within my LBA. I do not propose to regurgitate here in full and refer you to the LBA and the Executive Summary (paragraphs 112 to 118) within it.
5. I suggest that you read paragraphs 112-118 again and cease and desist instead from seeking to focus on the wording of one paragraph (13) in isolation and without all of the context and specifics that I have properly included in my LBA. Where ‘wrongly’ is used it is clearly defined in those summary paragraphs as to what I consider the wrongdoing to be.
6. I feel the need to refer you at this stage, given the serial attempts to mislead and wrongly interpret positions and arguments, to the SRA Code of Conduct, particularly but not exclusively those obligations specific to dealing with unrepresented third parties and seeking to gain an advantage on the basis of their lack of legal qualification. It is my opinion that your response to my LBA, in keeping with conduct by FCA GCD since 2015, breaches those parts of the SRA code of conduct. I put you on notice, that I will report any further such conduct.
In response to FCA attempts to claim various FCA conduct dating back to 2015 as 'Out of Time' for a Judicial Review.
7. I refer you to this position put forward in your response:
"Although in your letter you refer extensively to earlier correspondence, events and decisions as far back as 2015, we understand that you do not intend to seek permission for judicial review in relation to those earlier matters. If, however, this understanding is incorrect, please let us know and we will respond accordingly. We believe you are aware of the time limit in which a judicial review claim must be brought (that is, “promptly; and in any event not later than 3 months after the grounds to make the claim first arose”, CPR 54.5(1)[1])."
8. My LBA is being brought as a result of the response received from the FCA on 26th January 2023 in response to my brand new complaint, based upon entirely new evidence, that I submitted in November 2022, and for the reasons clearly expressed within my LBA. And you rightly acknowledge that my LBA also includes reference to conduct and offences by the FCA of same or similar nature dating back to 2015.
9. HOWEVER, you wrongly interpret that no conduct beyond 3 months prior to the date of my application for a Judicial Review is within scope.
9.1. You quite clearly acknowledge that I have the right to make a claim no later than 3 months after the grounds to make the claim first arose. The evidence upon which my entirely new complaint to the FCA in November 2022 was founded, was entirely new evidence in the form of more than 200 internal FCA documents dated 2015 and 2016 that had been unlawfully and dishonestly withheld from me by the FCA in February 2017 when the FCA had a legal obligation to disclose all of these documents in response to my DSAR (Data Subject Access Request). All of them constitute my personal information and all of them were only disclosed to me by the Complaints Commissioner (CC) in May and June 2022 in response to my DSAR to the CC, and they were all disclosed to me because the CC had a legal obligation to disclose them because they all represented my personal information. The same legal obligation that the FCA had.
9.2. It is these internal FCA documents, all previously withheld from me by the FCA, and all of which constitute my personal information, that prove my allegations within my entirely new complaint to the FCA, and those issues laid out within the LBA, and further prove that the FCA repeatedly acted dishonestly and in breach of its statutory obligations, and rights afforded me by law, as far back as 2015.
9.3. Indeed, this includes FCA representations in response to prior complaints I made, without the benefit of having this evidence and personal information, that are now proven to be false by the newly obtained evidence and personal information only obtained in June of last year, having been unlawfully and dishonestly withheld from me by The FCA.
9.4. Furthermore, the entirely new evidence also quite clearly establishes the reason Tracy Legg, the FCA Complaints Investigator that ‘investigated’ my complaint submitted by me in October 2015 and who took 14 months to produce the FCA complaint response dated 16th December 2016, was positioned to process my DSAR in October 2016. Namely, with intent that she censor and unlawfully conceal from me any personal information of mine that challenged or exposed the complaint response that she produced and sent to me in December 2016.
9.5. You do not get to unlawfully conceal information and evidence from me that exposes multiple breaches of statutory obligations, multiple counts of dishonesty and multiple breaches of the rights afforded me by law, and with intent to conceal that conduct and false representations, and then claim ‘out of time’ when I finally obtain the evidence and personal information that you withheld from me, and with intent to avoid accountability for the multitude of offences that the new evidence proves.
9.6. It is quite astonishing that you would even seek to further such positions.
9.7. FURTHERMORE, I refer you to other law, for example PIDA (Public Interest Disclosure Act) which also has a significant relevance here given that the core ‘background’ conduct to which these matters relate and are a consequence of, were my whistleblower disclosures specific to the attempt to defraud Tesco by Lloyds Bank sales persons, and the fraud against me represented by the Lloyds Bank ‘investigation’ that was entirely falsified.
9.8. PIDA establishes that claims must be brought within 3 months also. However, there is a specific provision that accepts that the time is extended where there are 'continuing acts’, each of which resets the clock and in which case time will run from when each decision is made.
9.9. In this case the FCA response of 26th January 2023 is the latest decision in the continuing act that began in 2015.
In response to the FCA's attempts to ignore the parts of the LBA relevant to the conduct of the Complaints Commissioner and the Information Commissioner.
10. You refer to points within my LBA that you assert were directed at the Complaints Commissioner and the ICO, and have therefore ’not responded to those’.
10.1. In the first instance, this ignores the dishonest and unlawful collusion alleged between the FCA, ICO and Complaints Commissioner.
10.2. And in the second instance, you have failed to respond in any event to any of the issues and allegations within paragraphs 9 to 35 that were specific to the FCA’s conduct.
10.3. FOR THE RECORD AND AVOIDANCE OF DOUBT, each of those paragraphs 9 to 35 is a request for information from the FCA to explain and resolve all of the various allegations within those paragraphs.
10.4. WHEREAS, you wrongly [or dishonestly] claim later in your letter that “You have not made any requests for information”. What are the allegations made within an LBA if not a request for information explaining your position in respect to each of them?
In response to the FCA's 're-writing' of history and their production of a new falsified narrative.
In response to your positions under the heading “Response to the proposed claim"
11. I honestly do not know where to begin with this section.
12. However, it is my formal allegation that The FCA have actually sought to dishonestly re-write history, and with intent to create an alternate false narrative for the purpose of unlawfully avoiding accountability for the various allegations within my LBA, and in the process actively compounding and escalating the variety and quantum of the conduct to which my LBA is specific.
13. I will be adding this to the offences in my application for Judicial Review, and as evidence of exactly the systemic breaches of statutory obligations, dishonesty and unlawful conduct that are included in and the subject of the LBA and the Judicial Review.
14. I refer you to this section of your letter of 20th March that purports to be a response to my LBA, and also to the letter sent to me on same 20th March by the FCA Complaints team at 15:41, just 39 minutes before you sent this response, and that has clearly been prepared to respond to the newly contrived and falsified positions within the new version of your complaint response:
"Dear Mr Carlier Thank you for your emails dated 10 November and 25 November 2022 to your MP, Laura Trott. She shared them with Sheree Howard on 2 December 2022 and they were passed to our Complaints team to review because they relate to past complaints you have raised. You will be aware that we wrote to you on 26 January 2023 to notify you of our decision on your complaint. In light of your letter dated 3 March 2023, entitled “letter before action”, we have reviewed our letter dated 26 January 2023 and spotted some errors in it. The purpose of this letter is to notify you that we have withdrawn our decision dated 26 January 2023 and we are replacing it with the decision set out in this letter."
14.1. The FCA quite literally confirm in this letter from the Complaints team, the production of a new [and newly falsified] complaint response, withdrawing the prior complaint response of 26th January, and confirm that its production was entirely as a result of your receipt of my LBA on 3rd March that was issued as a result of said original complaint response.
14.2. For the record:
a) It took the FCA more than three months to produce the letter dated 26th January 2023 in response to my entirely new complaint made in November 2022.
b) It is presumed by me that this complaint response was accurate and was fact checked by Sheree Howard [as per her oversight and review of letters sent to me or my MP revealed in internal FCA documents that I have] and/or FCA GCD [as per multiple internal FCA documents I now have].
c) THEREFORE it is inconceivable that any ‘errors', as you claim to be the reason for the new falsified version of that complaint response. These would have been identified by Ms Howard and/or FCA GCD, even in the unlikely event these ‘errors’ had been made, which I believe is not the case.
d) My MP, Laura Trott, wrote to the FCA raising concerns about the FCA and this 26th January complaint response. Several weeks later on 8th March 2023, Laura confirms that the FCA wrote to her saying:
"Thank you for your email to us regarding Mr Carlier’s request that the FCA hold a meeting with him. Apologies for the delay in our response. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to offer a meeting to Mr Carlier as we have already provided him with a response to his complaint and have reminded him of the opportunity to refer the complaint to the Complaints Commissioner if he continues to be unhappy with our outcome.
As there is nothing further we can helpfully add to what has already been considered, any further emails sent regarding this complaint will be added to the file but will not be responded to."
e) Again, presumably this response was also fact checked by Ms Howard and/or FCA GCD prior to it being sent to a sitting UK Lawmaker. Yet, you do not reveal to Laura any ‘errors’ made.
14.3. HOWEVER, and to be clear, the response to Laura does confirm the FCA’s understanding of my allegations that the FCA had a statutory obligation to have the meeting with me that the FCA apologised for not having with me in July 2015, and having admitted it would have been helpful to me to have.
14.4. To be further clear, the only remedy to the admitted failure must be to have that meeting that the FCA was apologising for not having. Anything less is a breach of statutory obligations.
15. I must now refer you to inconsistencies between the positions put forward in your response to my LBA, where you refer to the differences between the original complaint response of 26th January and the new complaint response that you dishonestly contrived and sent to me yesterday, and the ‘actual’ differences.
15.1. In your response to my LBA, you state the following:
"In considering this matter, we have identified errors in our letter dated 26 January 2023, in that we gave an incorrect date and incorrect references for your earlier complaints. We have therefore decided to withdraw that decision and to replace it with a new decision dated 20 March 2023.
This replacement decision (copy attached) now contains accurate details about your earlier complaints. In addition, it adds reference to a further complaint by you covering the same substantive matter to which we replied by decision letter dated 16 December 2016."
15.2. WHEREAS, this is a knowingly false representation. I include below the parts of the old and new complaint response under the heading “Our Response”
ORIGINAL COMPLAINT RESPONSE DATED 26th January 2023.
“After carefully considering the information you have provided, we have concluded that this is not a matter we would investigate under the Complaints Scheme. This is because we have already considered the substantive matters which were the subject of your complaint (our ref: 206092957) and reconsidered them again in your complaint of 208152647. These decisions were reviewed by the Company Secretary and you were provided with our conclusions on these matters in our letters of 21 December 2021 and 10 June 2022 respectively.”
NEW VERSION OF COMPLAINT RESPONSE DATED 20th March 2023.
“After carefully considering the information you have provided, we have concluded that these are not matters we would investigate under the Complaints Scheme.
After carefully considering the information you have provided, we have concluded that this is not a matter we would investigate under the Complaints Scheme. This is because we have already considered the substantive matters which were the subject of your complaint, as explained above”.
15.3. It is quite clear that there are two material, and dishonest ‘amendments’:
a) The first is the removal of all reference to the Company Secretary’s involvement in the investigation of, and response to, my complaint submitted on 17th February 2022. [see highlighted text in red] Why?
Is this because despite assuring me that the FCA Company Secretary was overseeing and handling my complaint submitted on 17th February 2022 due to the serious allegations within it as to dishonesty by the FCA complaints team, and where a letter was sent to me on 10th June 2022 by the FCA purporting to be the complaint response and purporting to have been signed by Mr Blake, that in truth Mr Blake played no part in the ‘investigation’ and that this was all false representations by The FCA?
Are the changes because Mr Blake refuses to be held accountable for that letter produced on 10th June 2022 in which representations are attributed to him, but that he did not make?
b) In the complaint response dated 26th January the FCA writes:
“My understanding of your complaint is that you made a complaint to the FCA on 17 February 2022 (case ref: 208152647) and were told on 7 March 2022 that your complaint was eligible, and an Investigator had been assigned. You later received a decision letter on 10 June 2022 stating that your complaint was ineligible”
At no point does the FCA deny that it confirmed to me on 7th March 2022 that my new complaint of 17th February was eligible for the FCA complaints scheme)
WHEREAS, in the revised complaint response produced yesterday the FCA writes:
“The first complaint is about the complaint you made to the FCA on 17 February 2022 (case ref: 208117527) and were told on 7 March 2022 that your complaint had been passed onto the Complaints team for consideration and an Investigator had been assigned. We informed you on 22 March 2022 that we would contact you again within 28 days to confirm whether it fell within scope of the Complaints Scheme and would be investigated.”
The FCA has removed all reference to the confirmation of eligibility provided by the FCA on 7th March 2022.
The reason for the change appears clearly so as to create a new falsified narrative, denying that the 17th February 2022 complaint was deemed eligible on 7th March, and with intent to dishonestly deny that the letter received [Purportedly] from Miles Blake, FCA Company secretary, on 10th June 2022 was not a letter in which the FCA was dishonestly, unlawfully and in breach of its statutory obligations ‘reversing’ that decision as to eligibility.
In the newly contrived, and yes falsified, complaint response, you assert that the email sent to me on 22nd March 2022, where the FCA state that you would confirm within 28 days if the complaint was eligible, was an email sent to me in respect to the complaint submitted on 17th February and that was specific to the Tesco matters.
WHEREAS, the FCA email of 22nd March 2022 that you refer to was actually sent in response to an entirely different complaint that I submitted on 16th March, in this email:
From: Paul Carlier <paul.carlier@live.co.uk>
Subject: New Complaint
Date: 16 March 2022 at 08:43:27 GMT
To: Nikhil Rathi <nikhil.rathi@fca.org.uk>, "CEOActions@fca.org.uk" <CEOActions@fca.org.uk>, "simon.pearce@fca.org.uk" <simon.pearce@fca.org.uk>
Cc: FCA Press Office <press.office@fca.org.uk> Dear Mr Rathi and Mr Pearce,
Please find attached a new complaint.
This new complaint is specific to part 2 of the FCA’s response to complaint reference 206092957, dated 21st December 2021.
Part 2 of that complaint is specific to my allegations against the FCA, FCA senior executives and other employees in respect to its witch-hunt investigation of me for breach of CMC (Claims Management Company) rules.
As you will see this new complaint and the substantial evidence that I now have, including internal FCA emails, proves unequivocally that not only were my allegations correct, but that the FCA and senior executives within it have produced a knowingly dishonest response to these serious allegations.
And the email that you now dishonestly seek to claim was an email specific to my 17th February [Tesco] complaint that was assigned the reference 208117527 by the FCA, was in fact an FCA email specific to an entirely different complaint reference, 208152647, that was specific to the FCA ‘Witch Hunt’, orchestrated on CEO Andrew Bailey’s behalf by his private secretary Toby Hall, and in respect to CMC matters.
From: Complaints Scheme <Complaints.Scheme@fca.org.uk> Subject: Acknowledgement of your complaint - Ref: 208152647 Date: 22 March 2022 at 15:07:47 GMT
To: "paul.carlier@live.co.uk" <paul.carlier@live.co.uk>
Cc: Complaints Scheme <Complaints.Scheme@fca.org.uk>
Dear Mr Carlier,
Thank you for your email dated 16th March 2022. We are currently reviewing your correspondence and will contact you again within 28 days to confirm whether it falls within scope of the Complaints Scheme and will be investigated. If there is further information we need from you to conclude that assessment, we will let you know. Information on how we handle complaints, and a copy of the Complaints Scheme, can be found on our website - https://www.fca.org.uk/about/complain-about-regulators. If you have any further queries regarding your complaint, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Yours sincerely,
FCA Complaints Team
You have literally sought to dishonestly conflate your communications in respect to two different complaints with intent to pervert the course of justice, and dishonestly, unlawfully and in breach of statutory obligations, seek to claim that the FCA had not confirmed eligibility on 7th March 2022 of my complaint submitted on 17th February.
It is clear that the FCA complaint letter dated 26th January applied the wrong FCA complaint reference to the complaint submitted on 17th February.
That is the only error, but you have sought to then exploit that error and with intent to claim that the FCA email of 22nd March was specific to the ’Tesco Complaint’ submitted on 17th February, when you knew this to be entirely false.
Indeed, I refer you to the email the FCA sent to me on 10th June 2022, where you clearly identify the complaint references that you assigned to each, and where it is unequivocal that the complaint reference to which the 22nd March email applies is NOT the Tesco Complaint submitted on 17th February 2022:
208117527 (submitted on 17 February 2022), in relation to, at a high level, your letter of 17 February 2022 (titled ‘TESCO Complaint 17th Feb 2022’), which you addressed to Nikhil Rathi, and your follow up email of 28 February 2022;
208152647 (submitted on 16 March 2022), in relation to, at a high level, Part Two of our response to your complaint (ref: 206092957) you were provided with in our decision letter of 21 December 2021;
The new complaint the FCA has now sought to establish as truth and fact, in addition to seeking to falsify the narrative and pervert the course of justice, also seeks to further the same false representations as to the subject matter and issues raised in my complaints, and particularly to having been addressed previously by The FCA.
16. This remains as false as it has been on each occasion the FCA has made such representations.
17. My new complaints are specific to false representations made by the FCA, including when responding to prior complaints, and the new complaints are based upon entirely new evidence that was unlawfully and dishonestly concealed from me by the FCA.
18. In short, the new complaints, among other things, are specific to the way in which The FCA addressed prior allegations and complaints, namely with representations that they knew to be false.
18.1. And the new complaints specific to the false representations used by the FCA to address issues, could only be brought upon the discovery and obtaining of new evidence, and on each occasion the evidence and information obtained was evidence and information that the FCA had in its possession, but had dishonestly and unlawfully concealed from me.
19. Your representations under these headings in your response to my LBA only serves to confirm and compound upon the various and multiple breaches of statutory obligations bestowed upon The FCA, compound and increase the quantum of false representations and unlawful conduct, and the breaches of rights afforded me by law.
20. And in the process, you have now added further counts of perverting the course of justice and failed to provide any of the information you were obliged to provide as an explanation in response to the issues raised within the LBA.
My response to the various numbered positions put forward by The FCA in response to my LBA, none of which sought to address the specific issues that are the subject of the 'dispute' or provide information in respect to.
FCA POSITION NUMBER 1
1. False. I refer you to previous points made in this response. The FCA has NEVER addressed any issue specific to any new complaint and could not have done so because each new complaint was specific to false representations made by the FCA when previously addressing certain issues.
The FCA references the upholding of the FCA’s complaint by the Complaints Commissioner in 2018 as some kind of confirmation that the FCA complaint response of December 2016 was entirely honest, but the FCA has failed to explain to this day how Tracy Legg could produce the complaint response that she did on 16th December 2016, two months AFTER the report dated 24th October 2016 was produced by the expert in FCA Supervision after their comprehensive investigation of my disclosures and evidence that I had escalated to the FCA in 2015.
An investigation, report and findings that Legg includes in her first draft of her complaint response dated 7th November 2016, but after the FCA experts report and findings that entirely corroborate my allegations in respect to the attempt to defraud Tesco, are sent to Andrew Bailey’s office and other senior FCA executives, Legg removes all reference to the investigation, the report and the findings, and replaces them with conclusions that entirely contradict those findings.
That report and findings containing the ’smoking gun’ findings that entirely corroborate my allegations is one of more than 200 documents unlawfully and dishonestly concealed from me by The FCA, all of which expose to some or significant extent the dishonesty of the December 2016 complaint response, but that the FCA and Complaints Commissioner both were in possession of when making their respective response and decisions in December 2016 and 2018 respectively, that entirely contradict those FCA findings.
And furthermore, the FCA is absolutely aware therefore that the decision by the Complaints Commissioner in 2018 to uphold the FCA’s complaint was as equally dishonest and contrary to the facts and evidence as the FCA’s complaint response of December 2016 was.
To rely upon the Complaint Commissioner’s decision here is astonishing, and deliberately ignores and fails to address any of the allegations and issues within my LBA and the significant evidence that I have to prove them.
You make reference to the FCA’s obligations under Part 6 of the Financial Services Act 2012, and disturbingly claim that your December 2016 complaint response and the decision of the Complaints Commissioner in 2018 fulfils those obligations.
WHEREAS, the FCA Complaints Scheme as published by the FCA in paragraph 3.1. quite clearly states:
3.1. The Scheme covers complaints about the way in which the regulators have acted or omitted to act, including complaints alleging:
a) mistakes and lack of care;
b) unreasonable delay;
c) unprofessional behaviour;
d) bias; and
e) lack of integrity.
I have highlighted in red the issues raised in my new complaints that were and are specific to the way in which the FCA and Complaints Commissioner addressed prior complaints, and the false representations they made within them, all of which were and are only proven by new information and evidence obtained by me subsequent to said complaint responses being received.
And on each occasion the new information and evidence being that which the FCA had dishonestly and unlawfully concealed from me.
FCA POSITION NUMBER 2
(This position is possibly the most disturbing put forward by The FCA. More disturbing is that the Complaints Commissioner also put forward the same position!)
2. This is a quite incredible position to put forward.
The FCA claims that new evidence, that had been dishonestly and unlawfully concealed from me by the FCA with intent to conceal the false representations in the FCA complaint outcomes, when eventually obtained by me did not represent ‘new' evidence that I was entitled to rely upon to challenge The FCA outcomes, and on the basis that this evidence had been in the possession of The FCA when you produced those complaint outcomes.
Outcomes that are only proven to be dishonest by that new evidence, and that the FCA had chosen to dishonestly ignore and unlawfully conceal it from me so as to conceal the dishonesty within those responses.
Astonishing.
If a UK citizen discovers that a UK regulator, or UK police force, prosecutor or other public body with responsibility for oversight, regulation and enforcement of laws, has withheld or concealed evidence so as to pervert justice or breach the rights afforded that citizen, any decision, outcome, judgement or conviction that was the result of the non-disclosure of that evidence or information, is absolutely subject to review when that citizen discovers or obtains that evidence.
Indeed, I must refer you to the raft of UK Postmasters convicted by the Post Office, all of which were the result of dishonesty and non-disclosure of evidence, and once the evidence was obtained by the victims, the cases were re-opened, reviewed and decisions overturned.
It is astonishing that you could possibly believe the position that you put forward here. A position that argues that these post masters should not be entitled to have their cases re-opened and reviewed when they obtained the evidence that was new to them, having previously been dishonestly and unlawfully concealed from them, and where those various parties that undertook the prosecutions were absolutely aware of the concealed evidence when doing so.
It is astonishing that the FCA would seek to deny my right to complain about false representations the FCA made, and the dishonesty, unlawful actions and breaches of statutory obligations The FCA committed, after I obtained the evidence and information that you had concealed from me, and that proved the false representations made.
FCA POSITION NUMBER 3
3. The FCA seeks to claim I have not exhausted all available ADR, and points to my failure to escalate these new complaints to the Complaints Commissioner as per the FCA’s direction and as the only form of ADR available to me.
Once again it begs the question; Have you read the LBA and that part specific to the Complaints Commissioner and the various and multiple unlawful acts, dishonesty and breaches of statutory obligations by the Complaints Commissioner detailed within the LBA, all of which is supported by significant evidence?
Furthermore, the FCA has known for several years that I believed the Complaints Commissioner had acted dishonestly in 2018 when upholding the FCA complaint response of December 2016 and have questioned the integrity of the Complaints Commissioner and raised concerns as to the conflicts of interest that exist as a result of their appointment by The FCA.
And furthermore, the FCA knew that I was in dispute with the Complaints Commissioner in 2022, and for the very issues included in my LBA specific to the Complaints Commissioner.
Yet, the FCA expected me to escalate these complaints to the Complaints Commissioner?
I refer you to your own statement "Judicial review should only be used where no 'adequate' alternative remedy, such as a right of appeal, is available”.
It is firmly established that the only form of ADR available was the Complaints Commissioner, which under these circumstances cannot be considered ‘adequate’, and where you the FCA have sought to deny eligibility to any new complaint, including by way of reversing an eligibility decision, in any event.
I accept this statement by the FCA as confirmation that all possible form of ADR has been exhausted, and that The FCA knows that all forms of ADR have been exhausted. I also refer you to my LBA and the broader themes within that expose and demonstrate the exhaustion of every possible means of FREE ADR by me prior to initiating these proceedings.
FCA POSITION NUMBER 4
4. I refer you to my earlier positions in respect to my application for cost capping order.
You state here that this claim is not in the public interest to pursue. I entirely disagree and so would all 70% of UK employees in the financial services sector who make protected whistleblower disclosures each year, just as I did, and who suffer detriment for having done so.
EVERY one of which has been failed by the FCA in one way or another, including the ways in which the FCA failed me. Since 2016 not one action has been brought by the FCA against an employer for causing detriment to an employee that blew the whistle, this despite FCA SYSC18 giving the FCA the powers and the obligations to take such actions.
I also refer you to the statements by Andrew Brodie at the meeting with me on 30th April 2015, where he confirms Lloyds abused me as a whistleblower and that this was a pattern of abuse the FCA was seeing from Lloyds and then.....the FCA failed to take action, and instead proceeded to attack and abuse me, lie to me and breach countless statutory obligations it had and has.
I have the testimony of numerous other whistleblowers failed and let down by The FCA, and subject to the same and similar conduct featured in my LBA.
This case is about honesty and integrity that are the cornerstone obligations that the FCA bestows upon the persons and firms it authorises and regulates, and that is therefore also bestowed upon The FCA. Indeed, Andrew Bailey himself said in an Op-Ed piece in the Guardian.
The public interest is served by truth and fact, and having a regulator and public bodies that are held accountable when they fail or breach the obligations and standards bestowed upon them. Without accountability comes persistency of failure, persistency of damage and the growth of arrogance and ignorance by those not held to account, and who increasingly believe they can treat others, the law and their obligations with contempt.
You dismiss my claims as to having no merit, yet fail to provide any response and fail to provide any information in respect to the various allegations within my LBA and the evidence included within my LBA to support and prove them.
That rather proves that you are fully aware of the strength of those allegations and the evidence to support them. Thank you for confirming.
In response to the FCA's positions put forward under the heading of 'Additional Matters'
21. And finally, I refer you to your nonsense under the heading “AdditionalMatters”:
"Finally, I should like to briefly address your email of 8 March 2023 to Laura Trott MP, copied to the FCA, which related to your request to have a meeting with the FCA about our decision of 26 January 2023"
21.1. Seriously? You have resorted once again to what you know to be an entirely dishonest interpretation of my correspondence, just as you have done repeatedly previously.
21.2. The FCA knows full well that ALL of my correspondence with the FCA relating to requests for a meeting with The FCA, are specific to the URGENT meeting that I requested with The FCA in my email of 21st July 2015, and to which this extract from the complaint response produced by Robin Jones of the FCA on 18th February 2021 refers:
"I note that in the closing of your email on 21 July 2015 to John Dodd, you mentioned: ‘There is so much more I can expose here regarding these transcripts and this disgrace of a whistleblower investigation.’ [...] ‘Rather than type them all up here, I would like to go over all of this with the Supervisory team and expose every issue these latest events expose.’
I have reviewed the available evidence and identified the reasons why you might not have received a response from the Supervision team in particular, or a response to your email. As I mentioned, John Dodd duly forwarded your email to the relevant team and I could see that they considered the information you provided appropriately."
"I acknowledge, however, that it would have been helpful to you if you had been provided with an opportunity to discuss the concerns you had in relation to the transcripts with the Supervision team or another FCA representative. I would like to apologise on behalf of the FCA that we did not extend such an invitation to you or engage with you in any other way in relation to the email you sent John Dodd."
21.3. I specifically refer you to the passage highlighted in yellow.
21.4. None of my correspondence with the FCA since that date has related to any meeting or request for a meeting other than that meeting referred to by The FCA in that letter, and that the FCA confirms would have been helpful to me and apologised for not having in 2015, confirming a failure by the FCA.
21.5. The FCA produced this in response to my complaint, and therefore all statutory obligations of The FCA, or any public body, dictate that it must remedy any failure that it admits to. Therefore, the FCA must have that meeting with me now, because it would resolve all of the issues with the FCA to which my LBA refers and alleges.
21.6. This could not be spelled out more clearly in my LBA, and in prior correspondence, meaning this interpretation can only be yet another dishonestly falsified interpretation of an issue, so as to be able to present the defence you want, but to a complaint or issue that was never put to you.
22. Seriously. Just stop it.
I will be proceeding with the application for the Judicial Review, and adding all of these points and issues within this letter to the application and as corroboration of the need for a Judicial Review to resolve these matters.
You have seven days, until 31st March, to respond to this letter and provide information and explanations in respect to the issues raised within it, and those raised within the Letter Before Action dated 3rd March.
Or, you can of course, within 7 days confirm that you are finally prepared to act in accordance with the statutory obligations and the rights afforded me by various relevant law, formally apologise to me, have the meeting with me that was urgently requested in July 2015 and that the FCA admitted was a failure and would have been helpful to me, and take the appropriate actions against Lloyds Banking Group for the fraud and misconduct that I will properly establish with the FCA at that meeting, with the substantial evidence I have, all of which corroborates and endorses the finding of the FCA’s own expert in their report of October 2016 in any event.
Having reasonably afforded The FCA a full seven days until 31st March to respond to my letter dissecting their response to my LBA, and requesting the information and explanations they are obliged by CPR to provide, The FCA GCD wrote this to me on 29th March 2023:
Dear Mr Carlier
Thank you for your email dated 24 March 2023, to which we are preparing a response.
We are unable to meet your request that we respond by 31 March 2023.
Yours sincerely
GCD Accountability Queries
I replied with the following:
"Good morning un-named person,
Not good enough. How is it that I can respond to your letter within just a few days and you cannot respond to mine within a week?
And furthermore, how can you believe that it is acceptable to fail to provide a date by when you believe you can respond, especially given the time sensitive nature for bringing Judicial Review claims?
I accept this as a further deliberate intent to avoid accountability, and intent to further your ever increasingly unlawful efforts to avoid provision of information in response to the allegations before you.
I formally advise you that I propose to publish all correspondence specific to this proposed Judicial review and the Letter Before Action this coming weekend.
You have until Friday 31st March to challenge such publication, and provide all grounds and legal positions to support any challenge. It is quite clear to me that your efforts are yet further ongoing attempts to avoid disclosure of your conduct, failures and dishonesty.
I must remind you that PIDA affords me the right to publish my disclosures and everything specific to them if my former employer and the prescribed persons fail to deal with them appropriately.
Paul Carlier"
The FCA haver not replied to this email indicating when they might be in a position to provide their response, and have not yet provided said response.
Summary
The FCA and the PRA compel every employee of a bank or financial firm to report concerns by way of 'protected whistleblower disclosures', assuring them of protection if they do.
The documentary record I now have after obtaining the significant cache of internal FCA documents in May and June 2022, that had previously and unlawfully been withheld from me by The FCA, proves every allegation I have made against the FCA since 2015.
My initial allegations within my complaint made in October 2015 and to which I received the response 14 months later in December 2016, were that The FCA had failed to investigate my disclosures, failed to take the appropriate action LBG for the conduct within those disclosures and failed to take action against LBG for the abuse of me as a whistleblower, and that this had significantly contributed to a potential miscarriage of justice at the Employment Tribunal.
The report and finding produced by an expert in The FCA Supervision department in October 2016 specific to the attempt to defraud Tesco by two LBG sales persons, and the actual fraud against me represented by the LBG investigator's falsified findings, entirely corroborated those allegations I made within my protected disclosures that I had escalated to The FCA in March 2015.
HOWEVER, the report and the findings revealed to The FCA and its senior executives including Julia Hoggett and Andrew Bailey that The FCA had 'dropped the ball' in 2015.
Not only had The FCA failed to investigate my disclosures at all, they had also relied entirely upon the LBG investigation findings produced by LBG's Andy Horsley (former colleague of FCA Head of Intelligence Jane Attwood) as Gospel, ignoring my disclosures and allegations and the significant evidence that I had sent to The FCA on 21st July 2015 proving the multiple counts of false representations, omissions of testimony that corroborated my allegations and falsifying of witness testimony by Horsley within his report.
However, instead of 'picking up the ball' in October 2016, the FCA took the decision to dishonestly bury the ball and me along with it.
The first document below was one of the 200+ internal FCA documents I only obtained last year via a response to my DSAR to the Complaints Commissioner, and that The FCA had never disclosed to me.
This document was was sent to The FCA Complaints Investigator Tracy Legg in November 2016 by another FCA employee in response to Legg's 'investigation'. This was one month before Legg produced her complaint response to me in December 2016 where she denied my allegations, and claimed that The FCA had conducted a comprehensive investigation of all of my disclosures in in 2015.
These representations made by Legg in her complaint response have been referred to and relied by the Complaints Commissioner in 2018 as truth and fact, referred to and relied upon as truth and fact in February 2021 by the FCA's Robin Jones, and 'purportedly' by Miles Blake, FCA Company Secretary in June 2022.
Both Jones and Blake also claimed to have undertaken their own reviews and claimed that they too could see that a comprehensive investigation was undertaken by The FCA in 2015.
Really? Now read the document below. This is a screenshot from The FCA systems taken on 22nd November 2016. It shows the status of the FCA's handling of my disclosures specific to the attempt to defraud Tesco as of November 2016.
As you can see from this document, the key facts of my disclosure and allegations as to the attempt to defraud Tesco are recorded.
HOWEVER, under the heading of 'Most recent and next steps' it PROVES that the last step was to obtain the investigation report from LBG specific to these disclosures and allegations on 2nd June 2015.
As you can further see, the status of the case is closed on same 2nd June 2015, upon receipt of the LBG investigation report.
The FCA simply obtained the LBG report produced by Jane Attwood's former colleague at LBG Andy Horsley, took every word as Gospel and did nothing.
Indeed, and as of June 2022 I now have multiple internal FCA emails and documents all of which confirm that no investigation was ever undertaken by The FCA into these allegations in 2015.
Furthermore and disturbingly most of these documents are emails sent to Legg and others as part of the investigation of my complaint, all of which absolutely confirm my allegations, but all of which are contradicted by the complaint response she and The FCA send me December 2016 falsely claiming the FCA investigated them comprehensively.
For example:
INTERNAL FCA EMAIL DATED 13th July 2015:
From: Sent: 13 July 2015 16:08 To: Cc: Subject: FW: Tescos Fraud
Please see further information provided by Mr Carlier. This has come as a result of the evidence bundle exchange for the Employment Tribunal. I would be grateful for your views on the matter.
Kind regards
[This email confirms that I did send in further evidence after my meeting with The FCA on 30th April 2015, contrary to multiple emails and the complaint response claiming I did not.
However, of greater significance is this email, sent in reply to the above email on 14th July 2015]
From Sent: 14 July 2015 10:54 To Subject: RE: Tesco’s Fraud
Ok thanks - but to manage expectations we have no capacity to investigate issues unless they are systemic and we have seen evidence of mal practice from a number of sources – we will not investigate individual cases
[The email is emphatic, they would not and did not investigate any aspect of my allegations in respect to the attempt to defraud Tesco! I now have multiple emails dated between June 2015 and in 2016, all of which confirm the same; that no investigation was undertaken into my disclosures and allegations specific to the attempt to defraud Tesco or the falsified findings produced by LBG.]
INTERNAL FCA EMAIL DATED 14th December 2015 to Legg:
"2. When the allegations were raised by PC to the FCA [Redacted] the allegations brought forward by PC ........ Lloyds was approached and they provided us their internal investigation report.
.........
4. Wider allegations about the treatment of Tesco and Thomas Cook were made by PC during his interview with the whistleblowing team and Andrew Brodie. PC claimed he had evidence of specific dates and trades and was invited to provide the evidence, however he did not. "
[FALSE. I sent in significant evidence on 13th July, and especially on 21st July 2015. This was the transcripts of the recorded interviews undertaken by Andy Horsley in respect to the attempt to defraud Tesco, all of which proves he made numerous false representations, multiple omissions of testimony that proved my allegations and even falsified the testimony of witnesses]
.........
"6. Further to the point 7, given that these allegations were made public by PC, it was also reasonable to expect that Tesco and Thomas Cook would have looked back at their own trades to uncover any mismatch. Nothing new has come to light."
[The FCA seek to also rely on Tesco not reporting any issues as a further justification of them doing nothing. To be clear, they are conflating two different disclosures here. The Thomas Cook issue was not the same as the attempt to defraud Tesco. And to be further clear, Tesco would obviously not have a 'mismatch' or other issues because I prevented the fraud occurring!]
INTERNAL FCA EMAIL DATED 1st March 2016 to Legg confirming reliance on the LBG findings:
"I recall that we obtained the records of LBG’s investigation into the whistleblower’s allegations [redacted] LBG’s investigation concluded that the whistleblower’s allegations were unfounded."
[I now have multiple internal FCA emails confirming the same; That The FCA did not investigate and instead relied entirely upon the LBG investigation findings. Findings that I had provided evidence to prove had been entirely falsified. ]
The above documents are a tiny fraction of the evidence I now have.
The journey is eight years in, but far from over. The Judicial Review will hopefully provide some of the honest and objective review that has been catastrophically lacking.
And hopefully the clarity that the Judicial Review would provide will ensure that no other whistleblower is subject to the same.
Indeed, and given the disparity between that which I believe I was entitled and that which these three public bodies believed was their statutory duties and obligations, it is also clearly in the interests of these bodies to have this Judicial Review and establish some certainty in this respect.
Which further begs the question as to why all three are so vociferously against it.