The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) will investigate the conduct of Jes Staley, chief executive of Barclays, following him “mistakenly” trying to identify a whistleblower Staley tried to identify the author of a letter that was received and treated by Barclays as a whistleblow in 2016. The board was made aware of this earlier this year and immediately notified the regulators and instructed an external law firm, Simmons & Simmons, to investigate the matter. In total, two anonymous letters were received by the bank in 2016 and treated as whistleblows. They were then investigated by Barclays’ compliance function. Having been given a copy of the first letter and made aware of the second, Staley initially requested the group information security (GIS) team attempt to identify the authors of the letters.

Staley considered the letters were an unfair personal attack on a senior employee and was informed it wasn’t appropriate to identify the authors, so no further action was taken. Staley later enquired if the whistleblowing issue had been cleared and tried to identify the author of the first letter himself. He requested the GIS identify the author, following which GIS contacted and received assistance from a US law enforcement agency.....Read more here