Former FCA risk manager fails to revive whistleblowing claim against UK’s financial watchdog
A former risk manager at the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has failed to revive his employment lawsuit against the City watchdog, after claiming he was pushed out of his job for whistleblowing.
FCA exec Walker Sigismund claimed he was unfairly fired from his job over his decision to file 27 separate whistleblower reports, about the capitalization of banks after 2008 and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) finance.
Sigismund joined the FCA’s predecessor, the FSA, in 2006, before his employment transferred to the newly formed City watchdog in 2013, where he worked as a risk manager.
His employment was however ended in October 2018, after he made a series of protected disclosures.
The FCA claims the risk manager was simply made redundant, while Sigismund claims he was unfairly pushed out of his job at the watchdog for his protected whistleblowing activities.
Sigismund later lost his employment lawsuit against the FCA after a tribunal ruled the risk manager had genuinely been made redundant.
“We have concluded that this was not a case where the [FCA] was ‘determined to rid [itself] of a whistleblower’, nor did we find evidence of a controlling figure, manipulating the process from the shadows,” the tribunal said in October.
Sigismund subsequently sought to revive his lawsuit against the FCA in calling on the tribunal to reconsider its decision.
The tribunal however refused to reconsider Sigismund’s lawsuit in claiming there is “no reasonable prospect of the original decision being varied or revoked”.
Prior to his dismissal from the FCA, Sigismund previously filed an employment lawsuit against his former employer, HSBC, over claims he was also pushed out for whistleblowing.
The FCA declined to comment.