John McDonnell MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Investment Fraud and Fairer Financial Services, has announced that the Group is calling for an investigation into the FCA’s handling of whistleblowers.
The announcement follows the death by suicide of whistleblower Simon Andriesz, whose experience has raised questions about the way whistleblowers can be treated when they approach the FCA with concerns about wrongdoing and subsequent retaliation.
Simon spent 35 years in the securities industry before becoming a whistleblower, reporting what he believed to be serious wrongdoing at his former employer, including fraud, money laundering, a Ponzi-style scheme, and embezzlement.
His disclosures also concerned financial and business links involving Cantor Fitzgerald, Jeffrey Epstein, Sarah Ferguson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
His disclosures were later validated: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission gave him a formal whistleblower award, and HMRC issued a substantial determination concerning matters he had raised.
Simon’s case was featured in the BBC File on 4 Investigates broadcast in July 2026, 'Epstein Files: Lutnick, the Royals and the British Whistleblower'.
Shortly after, Simon spoke publicly for the first time about his experience, at a Transparency Task Force event examining the FCA's handling of his case. He described in detail the personal cost of coming forward - to his career, his health, and his family. Simon joined other whistleblowers in calling for stronger protections for people who speak up about wrongdoing in UK financial services, and about the pattern of poor treatment of whistleblowers by the FCA.
Mr Andriesz said: “I did not approach the FBI with vague concerns. I reported what I believed was evidence of fraud, money laundering, charity-day fraud, embezzlement, a Ponzi-style scheme and potential RICO-related conduct, including financial and business links involving Cantor Fitzgerald, Jeffrey Epstein, Sarah Ferguson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Regulators later acted on significant matters I had reported. Yet when I repeatedly warned the FCA — including through direct written appeals to chief executive Nikhil Rathi and senior enforcement leaders Steve Smart and Therese Chambers — that the retaliation was escalating and that my family and I were in crisis, it took no effective action to protect me. The consequences have devastated my career, health, finances and family. A regulator that depends on whistleblowers cannot abandon them after they speak up.”
The FCA subsequently 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.
Other whistleblowers have since testified about the professional, financial and personal consequences they say followed from speaking up, including concerns about the FCA’s handling of their disclosures and their subsequent complaints. Several whistleblowers spoke out about suicide ideation.
The FCA has appointed its new non-executive director, Lea Paterson, to lead an internal review into its handling of Andriesz's whistleblower allegations.
An FCA spokesperson said: "We are very sorry to hear of Mr Andriesz's death. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.
"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."
However, John McDonnell, chair of the APPG and MP for Hayes and Harlington, has raised concerns about allowing the FCA to 'mark their own homework'.
He said: “Everybody understands that trust in our various institutions is, unfortunately, at an all-time low. And anybody who knows anything about corporate governance in a situation as serious as this - where there has been a tragic death - must surely know that it would be wholly inappropriate for the FCA to be allowed to mark their own homework, or to choose who marks it. I personally feel that there’s something quite insulting to the memory of Simon - who was on record over many years expressing HIS reasons for distrusting the regulator – for the FCA to now want to control the narrative by managing the review. The FCA shouldn’t be allowed to have anything to do with it, and that of course includes setting the review’s scope, time frame, terms of reference and most importantly who leads it.
"To my mind, there is a major public interest issue here, because our country is desperate for economic growth, in all postcodes and in all parts of our economy. Our financial services sector should be playing a massive part in that, but a prerequisite for growth is trust in the sector and its regulator. But nobody will trust the sector if its main conduct regulator is routinely failing to hold itself to a high standard of transparency, scrutiny, and accountability. If it is allowed to preside over a whitewash, there must be something seriously and structurally wrong with the hierarchy of oversight that is meant to be keeping the FCA on the ‘straight and narrow.’
"The FCA has been allowed to mark its own homework on whistleblowing once before; and it must not be allowed to do so again. Last time, they skewed the results of a survey in their favour. The whistleblowers surveyed were all carefully selected by the whistleblowing case handlers themselves. And only fresh whistleblowing cases were included – nothing more than 12 months old. And despite having over 1,000 whistle-blows per year the sample size for the survey was only about fifty, carefully chosen people. Anybody can see how that exercise was riddled with conflicts of interests that were never properly managed.”
Click here to read more comments from MPs, former FCA employees, and whistleblowers.
