Meet the Christian whistleblowers
Terry Messenger speaks to two former bankers who risked their careers when they raised questions about the culture of big business
24 April 2009

At the G20 protest in London earlier this month an effigy of a banker is hanged (Dave Thompson/PA Wire)

When the Queen visited the London School of Economics shortly after last year's collapse of the western banking system she inquired: why didn't anyone see this coming?

But according to whistleblower Paul Moore there were plenty of people who did foresee the disaster.

In testimony submitted to MPs he phrased the question in a slightly different way: "Why didn't the experts know? Or did they know? And did they carry on anyway - because they were too frightened to speak up?"

Paul Moore and Geraint Anderson are the two most high-profile "whistleblowers" to have emerged from the wreckage of the banking crisis, which threatens to plunge so many into poverty.

On the surface they are two very different characters. Paul is 50, conservatively dressed, outwardly conventional and serious. Geraint is 35, flippant and a self-confessed hedonist and hippy. But both are Christians. Both signalled early warnings against the disastrous greed and excess which infected our financial services industry. And both sacrificed lucrative banking careers rather than keep quiet.

Paul Moore's upbringing was deeply Catholic. He was a boarder from the age of eight at Ampleforth in Yorkshire. But when he left he lost his faith. He pursued a career in the City of London, where, he said, he led a life dominated by a futile quest for money and material pleasures.

"I was very miserable and I was working very hard but I couldn't find any peace or any joy and so I was looking for a way to feel happier and more peaceful." He began to rediscover his faith and in 2002 he moved to the Yorkshire village of Wass to take a job with HBOS at the bank's office in Leeds.

Wass is just down the road from Ampleforth. "When we moved back up to my alma mater I said to myself: 'I'm going to try to have faith, to pretend that I've got faith.' And as I pretended to have faith, I got faith."

But peace and joy proved more elusive. In 2004 he was promoted to the post of head of group regulatory risk, evaluating future dangers faced by HBOS.

He pointed out that the bank was selling bonds to customers without effectively informing of them of the risk to their money. He suggested that the b

ank was selling inappropriate insurance policies. And on the HBOS strategy of expanding its share of the mortgage and loan market he wrote in an e-mail: "Consideration should be given... to exactly what level of sales growth is achievable... without putting customers and colleagues at risk."

HBOS had to fund extra loans to customers out of borrowings from other banks, leaving it fatally vulnerable when other banks asked for their money back in the credit crunch.

In September HBOS had to be rescued by Lloyds after its share price collapsed amid fears for its future.

"I was saying effectively that you put customers and the bank at risk if you have an unbridled sales culture," said Paul.

After clashing with the sales division Paul was called in to see chief executive officer Sir James Crosby in November 2004. He didn't expect what followed. "He told me I was fired. It was like being hit over the head with a 12 lb hammer. I'd done all that work to try to help the organisation and I'd just been removed.

"I rang my wife, Maureen, who is the most extraordinary person. She'd had the faith all the time and she said: 'Don't worry Paul. It's all part of God's plan.' " His faith comforted him during the period of intense tribulation which followed.

Paul Moore: 'As I pretended to have faith, I got faith'

Geraint Anderson: 'The City attracts a certain type of person'

Geraint Anderson also had a textbook Christian background. His father is Lord Anderson, former Welsh Labour MP and Methodist. His maternal grandparents were missionaries.

"I had a very religious upbringing - church every Sunday. But then it was a classic case of rebelling," said Geraint.

He kicked against his background in two contradictory ways. He became a cocaine-snorting, dope- smoking, magic mushroom- munching hedonist. And he managed to hold down a job as a top-paid analyst in the City of London.

"But then as my mum said - you can take the boy out of the church but you can't take the church out of the boy."

In 2006 Geraint started writing an anonymous column for the London Paper under the pseudonym Cityboy, exposing financial scams and other debauchery rife in the Square Mile.

In 2008, after pocketing a £500,000 bonus, he left the City and dropped the cloak of anonymity. He wrote Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile, a personal memoir based on 12 years serving Mammon.

"You don't go into the City because you want to do the world some good or for creative reasons or for the love of the job," he said. "You go in there to make money."

The book describes how "a nice Christian lad with a Left-wing mentality, who was a hippy, becomes a complete nasty piece of work - although it's a bit exaggerated."

He explained: "The City attracts a certain type of person - quite greedy, quite into conspicuous consumption - people who want Ferraris and who define their self-worth according to how much cash they have."

In his writings he rails against four objectionable City practices which he says are common.

– Insider trading: buying shares in companies with inside knowledge that that the price will rise because they are about to be taken over. This cheats the sellers, often pension funds, out of the shares' rise in value.

– Trash and cash: starting false and malign rumours about companies to drive down share prices to profit from cheaper stocks.

– Pump and dump: falsely claiming good prospects for a company to bump up shares and selling before truth dawns and prices collapse.

– Complex ruses to avoid tax and shift the burden on to ordinary people.

He also insisted that many of the derivatives traders who so disastrously spread packages of "toxic loans" throughout the banking system knew full well the problems they would cause a few years down the line. But they didn't care because they pocketed big bonuses for doing so in the short term.

The majority in the City are not dishonest even if they are materialistic, he said. But he added: "Once you're there, if you want to thrive, you're going to do better if you've got less morals rather than more."

Geraint too has recovered his faith and now attends church "infrequently".

He said: "Not believing in God is as much an act of faith as believing. And if I don't go to at church at Christmas and Easter, I don't get lunch."

He jacked in his highly paid analyst's job and doesn't expect to be asked back. He's now devoting his time to holidays, writing and raising money to rebuild a school in Kenya.

"I've done 12 years sinning so I've got to do 12 years repentance," he said.

Paul Moore received a substantial out-of-court settlement from HBOS after he sued for unfair dismissal. He would like to go back into banking but fears he is "toxic waste".

He's now working for a Catholic social networking website Xt3 which helped organise World Youth Day, a huge event for Catholic young people. He's also campaigning for a full judicial inquiry to reveal in detail how Britain's banks helped push the world into economic collapse.

"It's vitally important that we find out what people did, not to blame them but to learn the lessons we need to drive future policy and prevent it happening again," he said.

His story gives him a unique platform to campaign for such an investigation - giving people an opportunity to speak up without fearing for their position. That's his plan.

The most famous landmark in the City of London remains St Paul's Cathedral despite the later construction of the great monuments to mammon. And the St Paul's Institute chooses a subject each year for discussion in debates staged in the cathedral. This year's topic is money.

The crisis has demonstrated forcefully how behaviour in the City affects people throughout the globe, said Institute acting director Claire Foster.

She's optimistic that "a wiser, more thoughtful, more forward-thinking" form of capitalism will emerge as bankers grasp the consequences for others.

"My goodness," she said, "have we had a demonstration of who our neighbours really are? We are not hermetically sealed off from each other.

"There is a capitalism which is moral and makes money but looks out for others in so doing".

And she believes Christians have an obligation to help bring that about by "having integrity yourself and trying to make the institution for which you work have integrity."

On a train journey from Wass to London to record a television interview it was suggested to Paul - half in joke - that those steeped in English Catholicism might feel culturally more obliged to stand up for their beliefs, despite the adverse consequences, on account of their reverence for the English martyrs. After a moment's thought he agreed.

But then again, all Christians are supposed to be inspired by Christ's outspoken example and subsequent sacrifice - including hedonistic, hippy, intermittent Methodists.