Soulless and Searching

Non-conformist Welsh minister, Presbyterian preacher and prolific seventeenth century religious author Matthew Henry, once said, “There are none so deaf as those who will not hear and none so blind as those who will not see” and for those seeking justice for financial injuries suffered as a consequence of the bankster driven economic crisis,  Henry’s words ring particularly true.

Recent years have not only revealed the numerous ways in which the UK’s banks have been prepared to defraud their shareholders, their customers and the taxpayer but they have also served to demonstrate the extent to which those who govern and regulate their actions have been prepared to turn a blind eye. As a result, very little has changed to the way in which banks do business and even less has changed to the way in which they treat their victims.

These days little mention is made of businesses crippled by miss sold interest rate swaps, pensioners whose incomes halved when “with profit” promises could not be kept or families who have suffered the consequences of miss sold mortgages. Instead, we are encouraged to put the past behind us and embrace the current signs of economic recovery feeling safe in the knowledge that “new” banking regulations are playing an invaluable and pivotal part in the UK’s economic success.

Cameron, Carney and Wheatley would all have us believe,

• The irresponsible avarice driven banking of the crisis has been addressed by a cap on cash bonuses (despite obscene bonuses still being awarded in shares).
• Jailing bankers for market manipulation or clawing back pay and bonuses will serve no useful purpose.  
• Getting under the skin of what was going on in the industry, [has enabled the FCA to carry]...out research to make sure the stark message issued was understood and being acted upon”
• And, accepting hundreds of thousands of pounds in political donations from HSBC does not colour the perspective of government policy

But, for those who have fallen foul of criminal banking, selective awareness is not an option and while predatory bankers and those who benefit from their favours thrive, the victims of banking crime are not only forgotten but left to battle for justice using a system which stacks the odds firmly against them.

• It has taken thirteen years of investigative reporting and a high court ruling to address the widespread mis-selling of PPI
• It took more than a decade and a government bill to secure very limited redress for those who were parted from their pensions by Equitable Life
• It has taken ten years (so far) and a Serious Organised Crime Agency investigation to raise a mere flicker of interest in the plight of the victims of the HBOS Reading scandal

And,

• True to form, it has taken seven years of media coverage and industry whistle-blowing to expose the mechanics of widespread mortgage mis-selling but still no Ombudsman ruling or formal regulatory interest.

Without access to Legal Aid or private funds to initiate a lawsuit and in the absence of a previously established track record of proven mortgage mis-selling cases to run on, my recently appointed DAS Legal representative has fallen by the wayside and, as a result, I now wait braced and unprotected for the next debt collecting onslaught from the Bank of Scotland.  Unlike the banks and the bankers, I have not been allowed to put the past behind me. Nor have I been able to get on with my life. Without legal representation, the best I can hope for is that the unscrupulous Bank of Scotland’s newly appointed debt collecting solicitors Drysdenfairfax might finally, after seven long years of my asking, chose to make use of my full case history to open the eyes and ears of their completely disinterested client to the fact that not only am I absolutely penniless but I, like the Bank of Scotland themselves, have been a victim of their panel approved broker’s very lucrative mortgage fraud  too.

As per usual, I will not be holding my breath. 

American born moral and social philosopher and author, Eric Hoffer, once said, “Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy-the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much hope and expectation” and after all these years of searching for assistance and, in the absence of any form of Bank of Scotland communications, here’s hoping my latest attempt to secure a lawyer, this time one who specialises in mortgage mis-selling, will not result in any further bankrupting of my soul.

Up Close and Personal

American author, Amelia Earhart once said, “You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward” and although my lengthy bank battling journey has fallen a long way short of any results, there is no disputing my decision to act has rewarded me with an enlightening education.

During the course of my investigation into how my family and I became the victims of the financial crisis, I have learned,

• Bankers intentionally flooded the market with financial products which were open to abuse in order to increase their market share and their bonus’
•  Regulators and auditors intentionally misled us when the banks culture of greed began to implode
•  Politicians intentionally feigned outrage and offered empty promises of redress to avert civil unrest.

 Six painful years, five lever arch files and two unsuccessful FOS complaints later I have now reached the following conclusions:

• Both the FCA and the FOS’s allegiance lies only with the banks and not their victims
• Austerity measures have made it nigh on impossible for the victims of banking crime to access justice
• And the voice of the individual,  however loud,  is all but inaudible

 Still void of success in the face of mortgage broker fraud, I have taken the following action;

• Applied for and obtained (via household legal insurance I purchased in 2005/6)  agreement to spend £50,000 with DAS Legal Services to pursue Karrek Financial Management Ltd for criminal negligence
• Attended an SME Alliance event for what proved to be a very interesting meeting which not only gave me a great deal of insight into other banking crimes but  also provided me with the opportunity to meet other victims and access professional bank battling expertise
• And, written the following letter summarising the criminal negligence of HBOS's panel approved mortgage broker to send along with 30 pages of evidence, to my newly appointed DAS lawyer, the Devon and Cornwall police and a barrister I met through the SME Alliance who has kindly agreed to look at my findings,

“Dear [All],

Further to our telephone conversation ...here follows an outline of my case along with supporting evidence.

In March 2006, having discussed our financial circumstances with Karrek Financial Management Ltd through whom we had previously purchased life cover, my husband was told by their mortgage advisor ****** ****** our monthly outgoings could be dramatically reduced if we agreed to switch our existing £725,000 mortgage with TMB to an interest only discounted mortgage with the Bank of Scotland and restructure our short term borrowings. He advised us to increase the debt secured against our home by firstly taking a further £65,000 by way of a Bank of Scotland further advance, secondly by making use of a £40,000 drawn down which, underwritten at outset, would be made available to us after three months of regular monthly interest payments and thirdly by taking a three month payment holiday for which we would also be eligible after making three monthly interest payments. His recommendation was to use all the additional funds raised against the remaining equity in our home to repay credit cards (see Doc 1. copy application form). Keen to alleviate his cash flow problems at a time when the terminal illness of two of his closest relatives (his mother and brother) was making it impossible to divide his time effectively between the needs of his family and the demands of his business, my husband agreed.

I have since discovered that not only is securing credit card debt against a family home a direct contravention of the Mortgage Code and financial regulations but the method the broker used to obtain this remortgage/ further advance was a blatant abuse of their position of trust and nothing short of fraudulent. Instead of advising how best to arrange our finances in the light of our circumstances, the broker’s objective appears to have been to affect a personal gain for themselves (in the form of a handsome introducer fee. (See Doc 2. Copy mortgage offer) by switching an existing mortgage and our credit card borrowings for an entirely unsuitable mortgage product which was not only unaffordable from outset but required falsified information to be used on the application form in order to obtain a Bank of Scotland mortgage offer.

• After a financial fact finding telephone conversation with my husband, the mortgage application (which we never saw) was submitted online (see Doc 3) by the broker whom we never met using false information which was tailored to fit the Bank of Scotland’s underwriting requirements. We did not supply the information the broker wrote on the application form (see affidavit Doc. 4).
• There were no acquisition costs to pay, neither were there solicitors or surveyors to instruct as the cost of the valuation and the conveyance, along with instructions, were either taken care of by the lender or added to the advance.
• And, on 30 March 2006, after being told by the broker verbally (again by telephone) we had received a mortgage offer for £790,000 from the Bank of Scotland as a result of him submitting our application on line we were sent, and duly signed, the declaration page and the direct debit mandate of an otherwise blank application form. There then followed another declaration sheet, once again without a completed application form, approximately two weeks later (see Doc. 5).

As a result of his efforts, the broker earned almost £4000 and we, unwittingly, agreed to move from a very tight corner which could have been rectified by the sale of our house, to an impossible situation amounting to tens of thousands of pounds in arrears (see arrears statement Doc 6), a £217,000 mortgage shortfall (see shortfall statement Doc 7) which occurred from the forced sale of our home in 2009 and six long years of battling with an unsympathetic bank while trying to establish precisely what happened to put us in such a position.  

Had HBOS not sent me an entirely unsolicited copy of our original application form (minus the declaration pages) by way of an explanation to some wildly inaccurate claims they were making about the original purchase price and original purchase date of our house in response to my over valuation complaint to them, I might never have discovered the fraudulent nature of the information the application form contained. This evidence first came to light in January 2013 and, as a result of a complaint I then made to the Financial Ombudsman Service about overvaluation, irresponsible lending and the falsified information on our mortgage application, I was told (in January 2014 after a full FOS investigation had been completed) my case should have cited the mortgage broker and not HBOS.  Needless to say the FOS were unable to uphold my complaint as it was deemed HBOS were faultless because they were not the appointed advisors for the mortgage sale.

The application form which ************ completed states that the mortgage product applied for was a sale he “advised” as a representative of Karrek Financial Management Ltd.  It also states our accounts were available and the mortgage was not self certified.  It goes on to claim the following;

• ************** had face to face contact with both my husband and I during the application process. This is completely untrue. We have never, on any occasion, met ************ and all communications between my husband and ************ were via telephone, email, fax or post. I have had no face to face or telephone contact with ************.
• Both ************and Karrek Financial Management claim they saw our original passports for money laundering purposes. This is completely untrue. We were merely asked to send photocopies of our passports and a council tax bill both of which have been signed off by Karrek Financial Management in handwriting which does not appear to be ************'s. (see passport Doc 8 and council tax bill photo copies Doc 9)
• Our earned income is shown on the application form as approximately 249k plus 75k with a further 50k in rental income for the years 2005, 2004 and 2003. Our actual income, as illustrated by our company accounts and Inland Revenue supplied tax returns, amounted to little more than 50k per annum in total for the years stated. (see financial evidence Doc 10)
• The purchase price and purchase date of the property is shown as £890,000 in 2004 when in fact it was purchased in 2000 for £250,000. (see Land Registry search. Doc 11)
• The age of the property is shown as 20 years old when in fact it could be as much as 300 years old or more and part of the property is thought to have been recorded in the Doomsday Book. (see Grade II listing Doc 12)
• The application states the property has five bedrooms and three living rooms when it actually has four bed rooms and two living rooms (see estate agent details Doc 13)

When I reported the details of this fraud to the Bank of Scotland, I was advised never to contact them again. Next I reported the matter to the FCA who were insistent that what had happened appeared to be fraud and therefore beyond the remit of both themselves and the FOS. The FCA advised me to contact the police. This I have done and my case details have been logged and given a crime reference number. The Serious Fraud Office for the Devon and Cornwall Police advised me to seek legal advice.

Having initially spoken to the Avon and Somerset Police Serious Fraud Office in August 2014 to inquire as to whom I should report this financial crime, I was told the Bristol police had uncovered a similar mortgage broker fraud amounting to 11 million pounds. This week Swinton Insurance Brokers directors were fined £900,000 by the FCA for creating an over incentivised culture which promoted miss selling and wrongdoing. It is estimated they will be required to pay 11 million pounds in customer compensation. I strongly suspect the same unscrupulous methods have been equally lucrative for Karrek Financial Management Ltd  but to date I have been unable to get to the bottom of why they were removed from HBOS’ lending panel during my applications processing. (see HBOS screen print Doc 14).Nor have I been able find out if they have been the subject of other similar complaints or any formal regulatory disciplinary action.  So far, I have requested this information from HBOS, Karrek, the FCA and Openwork broker network support.  My requests have either been ignored or denied (see Karrek’s response letter Doc 15).

While HBOS’ dubious underwriting practices undoubtedly helped facilitate this fraud, their only response to my findings has been to say they acted in good faith.  However, in order to assess my losses I would like to know if the mortgage contract my husband and I thought we had with the Bank of Scotland is now void as a consequence of the fraudulent information contained therein. If this proves to be the case, does it follow that the Bank of Scotland unlawfully obtained a possession order to force the sale of my home? If so, do I have a case for recompense against HBOS as well as Karrek Financial Management?

In addition to the copy of the original mortgage application, I have in my possession a number of pieces of correspondence between HBOS, their panel approved broker Karrek and us, as well as certified accounts and Inland Revenue printouts of our income at the time.  I also have conveyance details for our original purchase of the property and HBOS screen prints stating the broker was removed from the panel during the application process, all of which I have enclosed with this letter. However, despite my repeated requests, I have been unable to secure any documentation from Karrek as they say they destroyed the file once the mortgage was 6 years old. More recently, September 2014, I wrote to both Karrek and their network support organisation Openwork to advise them I plan to take the matter of my falsified application form further. I have not received acknowledgement from either.

In the meantime I have, on the instructions of the police, informed the Bank of Scotland (formerly HBOS) that they have been a victim of fraud and asked them to file a police report too (see Doc 15a). I have received no letter of acknowledgement or response.

_

I believe the only witness’ I have are employees of the Bank of Scotland, namely those who underwrote our mortgage initially, Jill Miller and Moira Easton (see underwriting correspondence Doc  5) and Mr David Groves in Bank of Scotland Customer Services who sent me my first copy of the original application in January 2013 (see Doc 15b) without the signed declaration pages, when I complained about the inaccurate figures he was quoting while he was investigating my over- valuation/irresponsible underwriting complaint. (see my letter asking for declaration pages Doc 16).

Had ************ of Karrek Financial Management not falsified our mortgage application to secure us an unsuitable and unaffordable mortgage against our home, we would have had no alternative but to sell it for the £925,000 value the Bank of Scotland surveyor gave it at the time (see doc 17). A valuation which both the Bank of Scotland and the Financial Ombudsman have both later endorsed as fair and accurate in my FOS complaint of 2013. Had we sold in March 2006 instead of remortgaging and taking a further advance to refinance, we would have received £200,000 after repaying our TMB mortgage, less agents and solicitors fees.  Instead, ************’s reckless self serving advice led to the Bank of Scotland obtaining a possession order in November 2008 because we were unable to meet our interest payments from outset. This gave the Bank of Scotland the power to force us to sell our home for a mere £665,000 two years later (see arrears statement Doc 6).  Furthermore, I would not have spent the past six years suffering the immense stress of the Bank of Scotland’s relentless and ongoing pursuit of a £217,000 mortgage shortfall which was created from this fire sale.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely”

LAD

Political theorist, philosopher, author and reporter, Hannah Arendt, once said, “Confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing” and after seven banking crisis ridden years filled with endless excuses for doing nothing and a plethora of meaningless confessions of collective banking and regulatory guilt, I am sincerely hoping £50,000 of legal funding will not only provide me with an audible voice with which to pursue our criminally negligent mortgage broker but I am also eager for it to provide me a long awaited opportunity to get up close and very personal with HBOS!

As ever, I now wait without patience, for news.

Shocks and Horrors

Founder of the Johnson Publishing Company, grandson of slaves and the first African American to appear on the Forbes 400 list, John Harold Johnson, once said, “Dream small dreams. If you make them too big, you get overwhelmed and you don’t do anything. If you make small goals and accomplish them, it gives you the confidence to go on to higher goals” and, as a victim of the banking crisis, I have been left with no alternative but to face our family’s problems in much the same way.

Still reeling from the loss of my home, my livelihood and my financial future, I have spent the past five years piecing together a life which was shattered as a consequence of the fraudulent behaviour of the banks. Initially my goals were as small as I could make them but at times it was impossible not to be daunted by objectives I was regularly told were insurmountable because of our circumstances.

•      Unable to stay in our home, I left no stone unturned in my search for a house.
•     Unable to produce a satisfactory credit reference I located landlords who were prepared to accept character references
•     Unable to cover the heating costs of the only house available to me I obtained permission to take lodgers
•     Unable to fund my children’s school fees I swallowed my pride and went cap in hand to ask for bursaries

 And,

•          Unable to arrest HBOS’s relentless pursuit of my massive £217,000 mortgage shortfall, I approached the Financial Ombudsman Service to make a complaint.

As a result of my efforts,

•     My husband, my children and I have had five uninterrupted years in a vast, crumbling, family friendly farmhouse.
•     My landlord has, for the first time ever, enjoyed five years of uninterrupted rental income safe in the knowledge we would care for and make minor repairs to his crumbling pile.
•     My lodgers have enjoyed the comforts of living in a family home at a price they could afford.
•      My children have benefited from an independent education at a school which was struggling to maintain its numbers

And,

•      The Financial Ombudsman Service agreed, on two separate occasion, to adjudicate my case against HBOS

However, after five years of painstakingly working to rebuild our life, I have watched in horror as much of what I initially achieved has unravelled over the past six months;

•     A hand delivered Section 13 notice from our landlord’s solicitor dictates a 50%  increase in rent will be effective from 5 Dec and as a result of our inability to pay my family and I are facing homelessness again.
•     Finding any property via letting agents has proved hopeless as, five years on, they remain unable to put us forward without a satisfactory credit check
•     Full bursary funded independent education for my dyslexic son’s secondary education is unlikely to be forthcoming as it is improbable he will achieve the required 55% grade in his common entrance exam.

And,

•     After ten months of rebuilding my second HBOS case of complaint when the Financial Ombudsman Service mishandled my first submission, my adjudicator has finally replied. I have had to waited twelve whole weeks to hear;

“I would like to apologise for not responding to the previous emails you sent across or keeping you updated on your complaint...[but HBOS] has confirmed that it is unable to get hold of [their in house conveyance solicitors] Pathway Residential Property Lawyers. It has confirmed it has called the contact numbers it holds which have a recorded message stating the service is no longer in use. It has also been unable to find a direct website in relation to the business. It has written to them but it would appear that it is unlikely a response will be received. As such I am unconvinced that any further information will be able to be obtained to add as evidence to your complaint...[therefore] I feel it would be right for me to start my consideration of your complaint as it would appear that there is little further information that can be obtained” .

As a result of this experience I can only conclude exoneration for HBOS is the normal result of toothless regulatory apathy while negligent record keeping along with obstructive behaviour appear to be banking business practices intentionally designed to impair complaint. If this is indeed the case, it is little wonder Lloyds Bank and HBOS’ CEO Antonio Horta Osorio, against a back drop of wide spread public hardship, is happy to publicly proclaim they are “back to being a normal company” safe in the knowledge that those of us who are still suffering from the shocks and horrors of  the fallout from their actions continue to be overwhelmed however much we manage our expectations and tailor our goals.

Many of us are still;

•     Unable to stay in our homes.
•     Unable to produce satisfactory financial credit references
•     Unable to find adequately paid employment
•     Unable to cover our heating costs

    And,

•     Unable to arrest the relentless pursuit of fraudulent creditors by making a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

     American writer, associate editor of Fortune magazine and futurist Alvin Toffler once said, “Man 

     has a  limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is over whelmed, the capacity for the 

     future is shock” and having ridden and survived a five year holocaust of  brutal and unsolicited change            only to find myself no further forward, leaves me shocked, overwhelmed and a seemingly

     insurmountable distance from Antonio Horta Osorio’s “back to being normal”.

     This is too is simply unjust.

Socially Useless Banking Regulation

Ardent socialist, co-founder of the London School of economics, novelist and playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “Until the men of action clear out the talkers, we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none” and true to form, the talkers would have us believe austerity measures along with the reform of banking regulation have put both the heartache and the economic implications of the banking scandal firmly behind us.

Keen to keep us all abreast of the good news we are told;

•       “Britain is holding its nerve...the British economy is on the mend...[and]... we are going to make sure that everyone benefits from this recovery.” Chancellor George Osborne
•          “People need clarity over interest rates... to remove any uncertainty and to allow them to make economic decisions.” Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney
•        “Britain is seeing the green shoots of recovery...it is healing...and it is out of intensive care,"David Cameron’s spokesman to Reuters (on a daily basis) 
•      "Investors from around the world [are] investing in a British bank [and it] is a sign the British economy is turning a corner", George Osbourne after the sale of 6% of Lloyds bank to overseas investors.

However, for the  99% of us who occupy the real world, the picture remains significantly less rosy;

• The long overdue FSA/FCA investigative report into the collapse of HBOS is to be delayed until next year.
• “Economic recovery has been restricted to those at the top...it is not recovery for most people” Labour spokesman to Reuters 
• “A significant cohort of UK borrowers could experience financial difficulties if interest rates were to rise during a period of subdued income growth,” Financial Stability Report
•  Living standards in the UK are lower than they have been for a decade because inflation is still outstripping wage increases Reuters
•  Barclays and Lloyds have set aside a further 450 million to compensate people they have defrauded and Lloyds have used delaying tactics to encourage complainants to give up on their claims. 

In addition to these far from comforting social truths,  

• The recently published bi-annual Financial Stability Report states, the banks Financial Policy Committee relaxed the regulations for the UK’s big four lenders to allow them to "reduce their capital requirements by 20%"  and in so doing has provided them with a further 70 billion of cunningly disguised bailout.

Meanwhile, trapped between the legacy of widespread and hitherto unpunished banking avarice and the greed of my landlord, my family and I wait, without patience, for;

• HBOS to supply me with information I require to progress my case of complaint to the FOS
• The FOS to respond to my 1 August request that they ask HBOS to supply me with the information I have been awaiting for eight long months
• My landlord's builders to finish their noisy decimation of the Grade 2 listed property I have called home for the past five years

 And,

•  A letter from my landlord’s solicitor to advise me he wishes to increase my rent by a staggering 50% as a result of the installation of an extremely expensive, entirely unsolicited, sustainably fuelled heating system.

In October 2012, Any Haldene, Executive Director of Financial Stability and member of the Financial Policy Committee, made a speech to Occupy Economics to advocate socially useful banking. He said “concrete, practical proposals for change” would be delivered by way of banking reforms which addressed the five “c’s” (culture, capital, compensation, credit and competition) and further stated, “We know too that the costs of crises are felt disproportionately by the worst-off in society whose living standards tend to fall not just relatively but absolutely”. Yet, five arduous years on since my family and I lost our home, our livelihood and our financial futures, the talk continues while, for the 99%, the painful consequences of the crisis remain unchanged.

Stoic philosopher, inspirational master of equanimity and the last of the five good emperors of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, once said, “The guest at the lower end of the middle couch...who is digging in his big mouth with a toothpick is a fraud. He has no teeth” and while I wait, without mercy for the toothless Financial Ombudsman Service, to progress my miss selling complaint against HBOS, I can only conclude both the talkers, the bankers and the regulators are precisely the same.

Ridiculous Enemies

Roman economist, lawyer and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero once said,” There is no sanctuary so holy that money cannot profane it, no fortress so strong that money cannot take it by storm” and while bonus pots continue to unashamedly reward the untouchables for their ever increasing list of banking failures, it is no surprise to find the words of this ancient Roman theorist still ring uncomfortably true.

Reputedly focused only on electoral gain, Cameron and Osborne do nothing to bring our elitist banking fraudsters to account while regulatory figure heads Turner and Wheatley prefer to promote the fallacy that the dirty deeds of banking avarice are but a distasteful memory of the unregulated past. In preference to making use of the laws of incorporation  to the secure the prosecution of those who chose to serve themselves at the expense of the majority, banking losses remain socialized while those who condoned them keep the wealth their dishonesty has afforded them.

In contrast, the  opportunities to seek recompense for those who fell foul of this culture of miss selling and manipulation are limited by way of cut backs to legal aid and the withdrawal of funding to charitable organisations such as the CAB. Yet, driven by the terror of an alternative which could herald the breakdown of the current financial system (not to mention the loss of influential friends and their much valued votes) our two faced politicians have left the victims of this criminal banking culture abandoned and defenseless in the jaws of their oppressors. As one would expect the ongoing governmental trend to pretend and placate the voters rather than address the root cause of the banking crisis, has done nothing to deter the same self serving and morally bereft people who now insist that lessons have been learned.

In the real world it is business as usual for the bankers and despite much talk about plans to serve both the economy and the customer, the long suffering individual is still being persecuted and bullied into untenable submission. The cases below represent the tip of a huge iceberg which is unlikely to feature on any politician or regulator's radar because, unlike powerful corporations with budgets for legal and financial advice, the individuals concerned have once again been hung out to dry having been left with no alternative but to succumb to the whims of the all powerful banks demands and then crawl away to seek some quiet solitude in order to lick their wounds. This is because many have neither the stomach , the knowledge or the means by which to stand up to the wanton disregard of the banking fraternity they are forced to deal with.

Over the past few months I have discovered;

HSBC, who laundered 600 million in drugs money and paid only the equivalent to a few weeks profit in fines as a consequence, are unprepared to renegotiate the terms of a 15% LTV mortgage of an employed professional woman, and a mother of three, who cannot make ends meet now her husband has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She has never missed a payment and had originally planned to repay her loan in five years time. She has been told by HSBC she has no alternative but to sell her beloved family home of twenty years as quickly as possible.

HFC, a key offender in the miss sold PPI scandal, have repeatedly told a chronically ill widow that her 30% LTV mortgage must be repaid in full. She has been advised her mortgage cannot be rescheduled  (her husband died without sufficient  life assurance to repay the loan) despite having made every payment in full every month for twenty years and a guarantee from her pension provider confirming she can afford to continue to pay. She is faced with the unpalatable prospect of selling her lovingly restored home as quickly as possible.

Barclays, who made a healthy profit from the manipulation of LIBOR rates, repeatedly told an 85 year old woman who believed she had purchased a lifetime mortgage  at 20% LTV that she would have to repay the outstanding balance on her mortgage with immediate effect or face the ordeal of the bank applying to the courts to take possession of her home. On attempting to initiate a formal complaint she was told it was unlikely to be dealt with until after her house had been forcibly sold.

And,

HBOS, who have earned themselves the reputation of being the worst bank in the world , unnecessarily forced the sale on my home rather than allow me to rent it to cover my mortgage payments, spent the past four and half years telling me a woman has no right to be informed separately from her husband about mortgage arrears if her husband is already in discussion with them and, having made use of a fictitious purchase price and purchase date in order to over value my home and sell me a mortgage in the first place, now tell me the discovery of these falsified facts has nothing to do with them. Furthermore, in true HBOS bully boy fashion, I have received two demands from their debt collections agency despite HBOS’s own acknowledgement that they understand my case is currently under investigation by the Financial Ombudsman Service.

French enlightenment writer, historian, philosopher and master of wit, Voltaire, once said, “I have only made but one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord make my enemies ridiculous, and God granted it” and if recent events are anything to go by, ridiculous enemies appear not to be the exclusive domain of Voltaire!

Unjust Desserts

American clergyman, activist and leader in the African civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Junior once said, “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” However, waiting for history to take a favourable course in the wake of the unquenchable avarice of our unprosecuted banksters has frequently proved beyond the capacity of some to face alone. For us, the determined spirit of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau has been invaluable.

First formulated in 1924 as result a of the Betterton Report on Public Assistance and launched fifteen years later on the day after the break out of the Second World War, this government funded service quickly found debt advice was a key issue for those who sought the expertise of its trained volunteers. After seventy successful years offering free consultations to those in need, their initial two hundred offices had expanded to three and a half thousand UK locations and its 21,500 volunteer staff had assisted some of the UK’s most vulnerable negotiate homelessness, asylum, state benefits, employment law, tenancy rights as well as two major recessions and the onset of the banking crisis.

The CAB now prides itself on being able to assist more than 14.2 million individuals a year. They are supported over the phone and the internet as well as provided with face to face advice from the bureau or visits to their homes. In 2003 following a review of its practices by the Office for Public Management, it was concluded, “the CAB service provides excellent value in return for the public funding it receives. It makes a significant contribution to individuals and communities, as well as to the process of policy-making and service delivery. Its holistic approach, national coverage and independence are to be cherished.”

Ten years have passed since this commendable observation was made and the CAB is currently busier than ever assisting those who have fallen foul of an economic crisis caused by criminality within the banking sector. With only the top 10% of wage earners in the UK continuing to prosper, it goes without saying many of the victims of debt and banking fraud would struggle to find refuge from their assailants without the CAB’s help. Yet despite increasing demand, the CAB has recntly been forced to turn hundreds of thousands of people away because their funding has been axed by 45%.  As a result of these governmental and local authority cut backs they have no alternative but to close offices which are still playing a vital role in the community. Sadly the CAB office which rescued my own sanity is to be one of them.

In contrast to the invaluable contribution being made by the CAB, the delusional and unrepentant bankers armed themselves with weapons of financial mass destruction, used the window of opportunity created by financial deregulation to approach their business activities without moral hindrance plundered the reserves of their banks, their customers and the economy.  Furthermore, by obtaining tax payer funded bailouts to preserve their jobs and their “modest” remunerations, they have cunningly redirected funding formerly earmarked for the auspicious community serving CA B and deftly removed the only means by which many of their victims have been able to fight back.

Roman economist, lawyer and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero once said,” There is no sanctuary so holy that money cannot profane it, no fortress so strong that money cannot take it by storm” and recent history clearly illustrates that a small group of inauspicious bankers have used money to both profane and to storm and it is the Citizen's Advice Bureau and it's service users who are now being forced to pay the price. 

Costs of Living

Joseph Franklin Rutherford, US trial lawyer, prosecutor and key developer of the Jehovah’s Witnesses doctrines, once said, “ False riches consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons” and allowing those who created a culture of banking fraud (a crime the industry and its regulators would prefer to call miss selling and manipulation) escape accountability, retain the proceeds of their ill gotten gains and position themselves beyond the long arm of the law, clearly illustrates how little has changed since Rutherford first made his observation.

In 2009 the National Audit office stated 850 billion pounds had been spent on saving the UK’s banks from the consequences of their fraudulent actions. This equates to something in the region of £3,500 to £27,500 per capita, depending on whether losses in share values are included in the calculation, and the obligation to fund this sum has been laid firmly on the shoulders of each and every individual in the UK. Furthermore, in Ireland current estimates indicate the cost of the economic crisis will quadruple that which the UK has so far endured. However, four full years since the first distasteful load of banksters dirty washing was aired in public, the tawdry truth has had little effect on those who masterminded this calculated redistribution of wealth.  Their houses and their lands along with their money remain intact and the fines levied by regulators (and perceived by the majority as punishment) have been, for the most part, funded from company coffers which were previously filled from the pockets of the long suffering British taxpayer.

Crime has clearly paid in the banking sector but for their victims the story is a very different one. Increased unemployment and reduced benefits have left many people struggling to make ends meet and 1.4 million families in the UK are currently facing homelessness because crisis driven austerity measures and job shortages have left them without sufficient income to meet rent and mortgage payments. Despite the Bank of England’s governor Mervyn King saying something has gone “very wrong” with Britain’s banks and “it’s time to do something about [it]”, little has changed. Speaking as one who has suffered insurmountable loses as a result of the banking crisis, I believe reform has not been forthcoming because those causing the problems have not been required to pick up the bill.

Natalie Ceeney, the Chief Financial Ombudsman recently told a Parliamentary Inquiry investigating bank miss-selling, “Evidence given by the banks was "factually untrue [and] implausible"  and further states "I have never trusted any CEO who says ‘I didn’t know'”. However, Parliamentary inquiries, independent investigations and harsh words have still not held the culprits to account and leniency of this nature allows infamous organisations like HBOS to remain untroubled by regulatory requirements and positively blasé about the complaints process.

As I have found to my detriment, making a financial service complaint is fraught with pitfalls and if my own case is anything to go by, it is not a journey to be undertaken by the fainthearted. I have spent years negotiating its tricky intricacies and despite my best efforts, I am still to be found waiting, under the less than watchful eye of the Financial Ombudsman Service, for a further two fruitless weeks for the Halifax Bank of Scotland to provide me with the thorough and timely investigation they personally promised me in November 2012.

In the meantime I have requested they supply me with the following,

• A copy of my original mortgage application form
• A copy of the Bank of Scotland’s underwriting compliance documents
• Acknowledgement from the Halifax Bank of Scotland ( by return) of my 24 Jan response to their letter dated 17 Jan 2013
• A revised response from the Halifax Bank of Scotland (within 14 days) concerning my over valuation complaint using actual figures rather than fictitious ones.

Needless to say I have heard nothing.

Joseph Franklin Rutherford also said, “If you are kept in ignorance of the true way and permit yourself to rely upon and be guided by the opinion of imperfect man, you can never gain the riches that bring you peace and lasting happiness”.  Likewise if both I and the general public continue to be kept in ignorance by the "factually untrue" and "implausible inaccuracies" of the banksters, I can see that not only will my imperfect Halifax Bank of Scotland customer services man be unable to furnish me with my rightful fair share of peace and lasting happiness, but the riches which were supplied to the banks by the British tax payer will remain in the pockets of the unscrupulous indefinitely.

Shams and Shambles

American inventor and businessman, Thomas A. Edison, once said, “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence and honest purpose as well as perspiration” and throughout the difficulties of keeping my family afloat while dealing with the aftermath of our financial demise I have, not unlike Edison, remained convinced that a satisfactory resolution to my Halifax Bank of Scotland complaint will only be forthcoming if I remain sufficiently focused on all that is necessary to accomplish the task at hand.

Committed to the pursuit of an intelligent solution to our predicament following the collapse of our property business (2008) and the forced sale of our home (2009) I have diligently, trawled for news of government rescue packages together with banking reforms and financial regulation which might aid my endeavours. With each and every letter I have written, I have increased my understanding of the ways in which huge organisations like the FSA, the FOS and HBOS are expected to operate and familiarised myself with the guidelines by which they are supposed to abide. The by product of this has been a much broader knowledge and a substantial helping of increased confidence.

Entering the beginning of my fifth year of battle, I remain hopeful that media interest, public outrage and my own refusal to be fobbed off by bully boy banksters and their regulators will eventually combine to affect a change which alters the way in which banks have so far been permitted to treat their victims. However, despite my best efforts and the pre Christmas promises of both HBOS and the FOS with regard to my over valuation complaint, I have to concede to date I have accomplished very little and even the past few weeks spent in hot pursuit of a hearing for my HBOS complaint have done nothing to change this.

Tempered in expectation as a result of HBOS’s past performance but, nonetheless, hopeful my long overdue request of almost year might have come to fruition by 2 January 2013 (as per the deadline HBOS set for themselves) I still remain with without word or any sign of progress. Resigned to chalking up this absence of outcome to an all too predictable lack of HBOS inertia in the face of any investigation, I am doubly disappointed to find the FOS, after admitting they miss handled and delayed the investigation into my HBOS compliant early last year, have once again reneged on their assurances to affect investigative compliance from this too big to fail 41% taxpayer owned bank by not insisting they respond to my accusations within the time frame specified.  It is my belief this lack of momentum only goes to prove, despite what the government, the bankers and their regulators would have us believe;

• Rescue packages were designed to rescue the bankers and not those who are having their homes repossessed or their investments devalued
• Fines and settlements have allowed the bankers to move on but not their victims
• Banking fraud has proved a lucrative and prosecutionless pass time which has shown no moral regard for the (estimated) hundred million people it has driven into destitution and suicide
• FSA remuneration codes and EU directives do nothing to encourage banker’s to cap their earnings or persuade them to behave responsibly in the future.

And, when it comes to providing a fair and efficient method by which the individual can seek restitution in the light of these findings,

• The UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service is at best a shambles and at worst a complete sham.

Thomas Edison also said, “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways which do not work” and despite a seemingly unproductive year which includes 44 blog post, 1538 tweets, 16,000 page views together with a fair amount of fruitless endeavours in the hands of the FOS, I remain hopeful I will not discover 10,000 ways which do not work for me before I finally achieve a much needed and long awaited way forward with HBOS.

Whitewash and Christmas

Former United States Presidential Candidate, three times governor of Colorado and lawyer, Richard Lamm, once said, “Christmas is a time when kids tell adults what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it” yet despite four long years in the grips of a global financial crisis it remains an unwelcome fact that both adults and kids are still paying the price of a banking crisis deficit which lined our banksters pockets with millions while their regulators condoned and excuse them.

During the past year we have been encouraged to believe 2012 was to be the year in which regulation and banking reform would finally make a difference.

•    Martin Wheatley, managing director of the FSA said,

“CEO’s are ultimately accountable for the way their staff are incentivised, so we expect them to take a real interest in fixing this [and] we have made sure the firms where we found failings are fixing their incentive schemes, improving governance and controls and, in the worst cases, checking past sales to identify if mis-selling has occurred.”

•     Andy Haldane, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England said,

“The occupy movement has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one simple reason : they are right” and “policy makers like me will need [their] support in delivering radical change” while this “quiet but unmistakable leaf is being turned” by our bankers.

•     Danny Alexander, UK Treasury chief secretary said,   

     What I want to see is [banking reform] recommendations made quickly so that we can get on and implement them, which is, I think what the people of this country want to see".

    

    However, despite encouraging words, the talk of 2012  proved cheap and instead of our banking fraternity calculating the prospects of repaying their ill gotten gains, it is only EU threats to cap their remunerations to a modest couple of million which have captured their undivided attention while, in complete contrast to the lifestyle afforded the favored few who waged economic war on the masses, the victims of their banking crimes continue to endure,

• Widespread and economically damaging unemployment  
• Austerity measures which have cost the average family more than twenty pounds a week
• Possession order applications against UK homes filed, on average, every two and half minutes

Insisting “we are all in this together” Prime Minister David Cameron said, 

“ It takes time to recover and we've got to do more. We’re going to do more. We’re going to roll up our sleeves and do everything possible to get business going in Britain, to get housing going, to get jobs going.”

However, if Andrew Bailey, chief executive designate of the Prudential Regulatory Authority’s words are to be believed, nothing could be further from the truth. Without a shadow of a doubt it appears,

•    Some banks are just too big to fail
•    Some banks are just too big to jail

And unlike the rest of society,

•    Some bankers enjoy carte blanche to operate outside the law 

Benjamin Franklin once said, “A good conscience is a continual Christmas” and while I cannot pretend my four years of fighting and two years of complaining to the FOS about HBOS  is in any way reminiscent of an eternal Christmas, I cannot help but wonder how those responsible for the avarice and arrogance which brought about levels of widespread hardship likened only to that of a world war have, despite all corporate, governmental and regulatory attempts to whitewash their crimes, enjoyed the festive traditions of proffering goodwill to all men or the peace of a good conscience during the fourth Christmas of this ongoing economic crisis.