REAL MEDIA
2018 / ISSUE 107
9
OMERTA: THE VOW OF
SILENCE AT RBS
A years-long
scandal at RBS is
continuing to unfold.
It involves the bank
deliberately crushing
and distressing
small businesses in
its turnaround unit
for its own profits.
16,000 businesses
went through the unit
during the recession
and 92% were mis-
treated according
to a newly available
review by the Financial
Conduct Authority.
How did the scandal get covered
up for so long? We talked to
financial journalist Ian Fraser about
'Omerta'
WHAT IS AN OMERTA?
An omerta is a mafia term which
relates to a vow of silence, which
if you're captured by the police or
by your enemies you don't spill the
beans on who your colleagues are
or what they've been up to within
the organisation, in the mafia. This
very much applies to the banking
sector. There's been an omerta, I
believe there is an omerta, and I
experienced it when I was trying to
research my book to some extent,
in that a lot of senior bankers,
especially those that are still active
in the industry, even if they move
to a different institution don't want
to tell you about what's happening
in their industry.
So it's a vow of silence which
many bankers seem to have signed
it, I don't think there's an official
one, I don't think they've actually
signed it, but it's a culture of
silence, within the city and within
the banking sector of persecuting
and vilifying whistleblowers. So
if you are a whistleblower that
identifies wrongdoing and tries
to alert the authorities or alert
the media to the fact there's
been some wrongdoing within
your institution, especially in this
country the UK, you're actually
signing a death warrant because
there's no real protection, they will
get ostracised by their colleagues,
they will never get a job back in
that industry and it's so different
to the US.
The US doesn't do everything
perfectly but in terms of the way
they treat whistleblowers, it's poles
apart to the UK. They give them
massive rewards. The regulator
gives them hundreds of millions of
dollars in rewards so it's a totally
different incentive structure for
whistleblowers and they are
protected there as well.
Ian Fraser is the author of
'Shredded: Inside RBS - The Bank
That Broke Britain'