The FCA will be probed at the APM today

The British Banker highlighted alleged links between the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick. Transparency Task Force confirmed Andriesz died last month aged 57.

The banker alleged wrongdoing at a Wall Street brokerage formelt run by Lutnick and now the regulator has come under fire over whether is was supportive enough over allegations of retaliation by his former employer sufficiently seriously.

A cross-party group of MPs warned Andriesz death raised “deeply troubling questions” and called for an external inquiry into the FCA’s handling of whistleblowers. The politicians said the regulators should not be “marking their own homework” on this issue.

In a statement the FCA claimed it had asked former Bank of England official Lea Patterson to lead the the review examining “how we [the FCA] interacted with Mr Andriesz to learn any lessons for the future”. He recently joined the regulator’s board as a non-executive.

They said: “We are very sorry to hear of Mr Andriesz’s death. Our thoughts are with his family and friends”, confirming it is aiming to publish the conclusion of its internal review by the end of the year.

An FCA spokesperson added: “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.”

The all-party parliamentary group on investment fraud and fairer financial services said the death “raised deeply troubling questions about the way whistleblowers can be treated when they approach the FCA with concerns about wrongdoing and subsequent retaliation”.

It is likely to increase concern over the safety of whistleblowers in the UK who often pay a high price with little reward, suffering financial and emotional harm as well as losing their job and being blacklisted by potential employers while dealing with intense stress of hiring lawyers and taking on corporates with deep pockets. 

The British banker disclosed alleged wrongdoing at BGC Group, a listed broker controlled by Cantor Fitzgerald where he was a managing director, to several US and UK regulators

Lutnick ran both companies until he was made US commerce secretary last year, when ownership was transferred to Cantor Fitzgerald to trusts benefiting his children and sold his stake in BGC.

Andriesz passed on emails showing Lutnick’s links to the late paedophile financier Epstein to the House Oversight Committee, which questioned Lutnick behind closed doors.

Regulators imposed penalties on BGC based on the information provided by the British banker. Andriesz told an event before his death that the FCA did not prove most of the allegations and only took supervisory action, calling it a a “slap on the wrist”.

The cross party group said in a statement the UK Regulator “acknowledged that advice given to Simon by an FCA official, that he had lost whistleblower protection because his identity had become known, was incorrect. The FCA apologised and said that further guidance and training would be provided to its whistleblowing team.”

His information helped US and UK authorities take action against BGC. The group was ordered to pay $3m to comply with various undertakings in 2019 to settle charges of “numerous supervision, reporting and record-keeping violations” after it was ordered by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered BGC to pay $3mn and to comply with various undertakings in 2019.

BGC were fined $1.4m by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in a settlement of alleged “false and misleading disclosures”. HM Revenue & Customs issued BGC with determinations to pat £96m in tax on money paid to its members of its limited-liability partnership in 2024.

The British Banked was paid $420,000 under the CFTC whistleblower programme, which rewards people who voluntarily provide information that leads to enforcement action. He said at a Transparency Taskforce event the payout was absorbed by legal costs and more than $200,00 in medical bills caused by the strain of the process.

BGC said it was “sorry to hear this sad news and expresses our condolences to Mr Andriesz’s family during this difficult time.” The US commerce department did not respond to a request for comment.