Ex-bank boss banned from financial industry
DISGRACED former Co-operative Bank boss Paul Flowers has been banned from the financial services industry by the City watchdog.
The former Methodist Minister was chair of Co-op Bank between 2010 and 2013, but was forced to step down amid allegations he bought and used illegal drugs, as well as claiming inappropriate expenses.
On Tuesday the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that Mr Flowers demonstrated a ‘lack of fitness and propriety’ required to work in financial services.
Mr Flowers had faced accusations of incompetence after the Co-operative Bank was found to have a £1.5bn black hole in its finances. It later had to be rescued by US hedge funds.
Mr Flowers, who was a councillor in Rochdale from 1988 to 1992, was later fined £400 after pleading guilty to possessing cocaine, ketamine and crystal meth.
Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: “The role of chair occupies a unique place of trust and influence.
“The chair is pivotal in setting expectations of a company’s culture, values and behaviours.
“Mr Flowers failed in his duty to lead by example and to meet the high standards of integrity and probity demanded by the role.
“These high standards are what the financial services industry and the wider community rightly expect of its senior individuals.
“Where a chair, or other senior individual, fails to discharge these standards the FCA will hold them to account.”
The FCA found that Mr Flowers, a former minister of Champness Hall in Rochdale town centre, demonstrated an ‘unwillingness to comply’ with its and other legal, regulatory and professional requirements and standards.
Its probe showed that Mr Flowers, who also helped oversee Rochdale social services at the time of the alleged Satanic abuse scandal in Middleton, used his work mobile telephone to make ‘a number of inappropriate telephone calls to a premium rate chat line’, in breach of Co-op Group and Co-op Bank policies.
In addition, he used his work email account to send and receive ‘sexually explicit and otherwise inappropriate messages, and to discuss illegal drugs’, the FCA added, despite having been previously warned about his earlier misconduct.
Following the scandal, Mr Flowers was also removed from the list of Methodist Church ministers, stripped of the title reverend and also the power to lead services for ‘seriously impairing the mission, witness or integrity of the Church’.
In a damning statement, the watchdog said it believes Mr Flowers’ disregard for the standards he is expected to meet demonstrates a ‘lack of integrity’ and that any future involvement by Mr Flowers in the financial services industry risks ‘undermining consumer and market confidence’.
“Mr Flowers failed in his duty to meet the high standards of integrity and probity”