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O September 14, 2012 9:38 pm The whistleblowers club By Carola Hoyos They faced down banks, hospitals and defence c ompanies. Now the y’re oini ng forc es n a quiet spring evening in 1999, Eileen Chubb walked as casually as she could into the office of Isard House, the care home for the elderly in Bromley, Kent where she had  been workin g fo r t he past thre e y ears. Glanci ng o v er her shou lder, certain she was going to  be caught, she pi cked a ring-bin der fol der off a hi gh shel f and emp tied i t of abo ut 70 sheet s of medical records. She handed them to a fellow care worker, who climbed the rarely used back stairs to a photocopier. The machine was so basic it took an excruciating 70 times of opening and closing the lid to copy the evidence they both hoped would make their employer acknowledge the abuse of elderly and vulnerable patients in one of its units. The pair were running out of time. Chubb, who had reported the abusers to social services two weeks earlier, was aware that a mana ger was en route. Judgi ng by t he distan ce from the manager’s home and the li ght ev ening traffic, Ch ubb knew t hey had at best 10 minutes. “I was doi ng what I thou ght was r ig ht. At the t ime I di dn’t ev en know what a whistl eblo wer  was,” say s Chubb. “I go t pushed over a li ne when I saw t he sho utin g and the push in g. We told management and social services and no one made it stop,” she explains, adding that she felt she had a duty to act. Failing to do so when she knew it was happening would make her an accomplice. ©Gino Sprio
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The Whistleblowers Club - FT

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O

September 14, 2012 9:38 pm

The whistleblowers club

By Carola Hoyos

They faced down banks, hospitals and defence companies. Now they’re

oining forces

n a quiet spring evening in 1999, Eileen Chubb walked as casually as she could into the

office of Isard House, the care home for the elderly in Bromley, Kent where she had

 been working for the past three years. Glancing over her shoulder, certain she was going to

 be caught, she picked a ring-binder folder off a high shelf and emptied it of about 70 sheets of 

medical records. She handed them to a fellow care worker, who climbed the rarely used back 

stairs to a photocopier. The machine was so basic it took an excruciating 70 times of opening

and closing the lid to copy the evidence they both hoped would make their employeracknowledge the abuse of elderly and vulnerable patients in one of its units. The pair were

running out of time. Chubb, who had reported the abusers to social services two weeks

earlier, was aware that a manager was en route. Judging by the distance from the manager’s

home and the light evening traffic, Chubb knew they had at best 10 minutes.

“I was doing what I thought was right. At the time I didn’t even know what a whistleblower

 was,” says Chubb. “I got pushed over a line when I saw the shouting and the pushing. We

told management and social services and no one made it stop,” she explains, adding that shefelt she had a duty to act. Failing to do so when she knew it was happening would make her

an accomplice.

©Gino Sprio

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“That’s when I thought: if I get the medical records that show 

Edna – who was in her nineties and a sweet, sweet lady – is

 being given such high doses of anti-psychotic drugs that she lies comatose with her head on

the table, I would be able to make it stop.” But Chubb would learn the hard way what

happens to whistleblowers who want to expose a secret that powerful people have an

interest in keeping hidden.

There is no good way of getting a divorce, no good way of dying and there’s no good way of 

 whistleblowing. Even in the UK, where whistleblower protection laws are held up as some of 

the best, a standard for other countries to emulate, whistleblowers often find themselves

shunned by their employer, ignored by regulators and let down by a court system that

concentrates on their employment experience, rather than on the problems they reveal. And

regardless of how legitimate their case, whistleblowers who go public rarely get to work again

in the industry they expose. Many lose their wealth, their homes, their families, their

reputations and their mental health. Some contemplate suicide.

This is why Chubb has come to London on a late-August morning, more than a decade after

she first blew the whistle. She is attending the third meeting of Whistleblowers UK, or

 WBUK, a nascent charity made up of whistleblowers as diverse as bankers, defence

contractors, police detectives, doctors, nurses and care workers.

The law specifically protecting whistleblowers in Britain came into force in 1999 and is

integrated into the country’s employment laws. It requires the whistleblower to be acting in

the public interest, allows for unlimited compensation and, in theory, voids gagging clauses.

But unlike in the US, British law focuses narrowly on the employment status of the

 whistleblower, not on the whistleblower’s message.

The US still has no general employment protection legislation. But it has a whistleblowers’

ombudsman (appointed last month) and it outlaws victimisation of those who report

infringements of particular statutes, including environmental, health and safety measures.

Federal laws reward whistleblowers who help the government claw back money lost through

fraud, and allow for others to share in fines levied by its regulators.

 WBUK is the UK’s first broad-support lobbying group set up by whistleblowers. For anyone

 who has followed British whistleblowing for the past decade, room AG03 on the ground floor

of City University’s College Building in north-east London is filled with an Olympic line-up.

Between them, the people founding WBUK have saved lives; stopped abuse; helped to usher

in new anti-bribery laws; forced the revamp of hospitals and care homes. More than $500m

in fines has resulted from their campaigns.

Ian Foxley, a tall, erudite, former army lieutenant colonel and the emerging group’s

chairman, leans back on an aluminium chair. To his left sits Peter Gardiner, a 71-year-old

entrepreneur who ran a successful London-based corporate travel business for 21 years.

Their shared history as whistleblowers – both raised (separate) allegations of UK defence

contractors bribing Saudi officials – has drawn them together as friends and confidants.

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Rounding out their corner of the conference table is Gavin MacFadyen, director of the UK’s

Centre for Investigative Journalism. It was he who suggested to the whistleblowers that

they form a group at a seminar he ran last summer.

Beyond them sit about two dozen people whose lives, like those of Foxley and Gardiner, have

 been transformed because they refused to look the other way. They have come together to

create a network to offer advice, legal counsel and psychological care to future whistleblowers, as well as campaign for their shared cause. The anger, hurt and frustration of 

their debate makes evident that WBUK also serves as a support mechanism for its

participants.

Ian Foxley compared the very first meeting of the group, in March 2011, to “the site of a

plane crash where the survivors were just getting to grips with their own injuries and those

of their fellow passengers”. But today, the room is more like the ward of a hospital, full of 

“doctors and patients”, as Foxley puts it. Which side you belong to is determined by how far

 you have progressed along the arc of the life of a whistleblower.

Ian Taplin, the former Lloyds TSB bank executive, is still fighting for recognition of his

allegations against the bank. He is a “patient”, still at the beginning of the arc, wrapped up in

the injustice of his own case, angrily repeating his point as he leans over the table.

Diagonally across from him sits Martin Woods, whose detective work at US bank Wachovia

in 2006 eventually helped expose how Mexican drug cartels laundered millions of dollars

through the bank’s accounts.

 Woods’ journey started with much the same emotion as Taplin’s. “I think everyone in this

room at one time thought about ending it all,” he says. After going to the press and the US

financial regulator, which eventually fined Wachovia, Woods’ situation improved.

Nevertheless, it took him another three years of being turned away by what seemed to him

to be the entire banking industry, before he found a similar job just days before this meeting.

He is one of the “doctors”, as are Foxley, Gardiner, Chubb and a handful of others. Also

among them are Kim Holt, the paediatrician who blew the whistle on the chaos and skeletalstaffing at the Haringey clinic where Baby Peter Connelly was examined (Baby P was given a

clean bill of health two days before dying of injuries inflicted by his mother and her

 boyfriend); Margaret Haywood, who helped the BBC expose abusive care within the NHS

and was subsequently struck off the nursing register; and Vivienne Yarham, whose

allegations about unethical behaviour by two police officers ended her 25-year career in the

police force.

David Morgan, sitting diagonally opposite Foxley, is a consultant psychotherapist and

psychoanalyst who has agreed to help WBUK. He believes that many of us survive by 

turning a blind eye to transgressions big and small – from the wrong person being promoted

for the wrong reasons, to banking executives who launder billions of dollars of drug money.

He is intrigued by the psychological burden of whistleblowing and by what society’s often

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 violent reaction to whistleblowers tells us about the health of the system.

“We survive and maintain our own security often by turning a blind eye. A whistleblower for

many reasons goes against the flow and does not turn a blind eye,” says Morgan.

 Whistleblowers sometimes have no idea what they are getting themselves into, he adds,

especially regarding the psychological effects of the backlash.

Those whistleblowers who refuse to succumb to pressure when employers attack them with

accusations of ineptitude or mental instability; who get over their disbelief when police or

regulators fail to take up their cause; and who resist the temptation to make it all go away by 

accepting settlements with gagging clauses, appear to have one thing in common. They say 

the internal conflict they would unleash by looking the other way or capitulating, while still

 believing in the truth of their case, would dwarf any punishment the outside world could

administer.

Nevertheless, the punishment can be brutal. Kim Holt, the paediatric consultant, was unableto return to her job for several years after raising her concerns in 2006. “My daughter was

 being bullied at school. At the same time, she was seeing her mother being bullied to the

point where she is becoming ill,” she says. “But I think in a way I am quite cushioned, I have

a husband, I have money, I never lost my job and I have sort of been vindicated in the press.

Other people never get their careers back. They end up in poverty.”

Peter Gardiner was not as lucky as Holt. In 2004 he turned to the Serious Fraud Office

(SFO) after halting his travel agency’s work as a concierge for Saudi officials, whose expenses

 were being funded by UK defence contractor BAE. Gardiner ended his lucrative contract

 with BAE because his lawyers had advised him a new UK anti-terrorism law with an anti-

 bribery clause meant he risked acting illegally by continuing. But after halting the contract

and “blowing the whistle” to the SFO, Gardiner went from having “the life of private jets and

cars” and a six-bedroom house in St Albans, to losing his home, his business, his art, his

pension and his family.

The SFO initially investigated Gardiner himself. “No one wants an individual who is being

investigated. I didn’t have any money any more ... ” His marriage broke up. “That was the worst,” he says, so softly that it is difficult to hear him. At around the time the SFO’s

investigation into BAE was quashed by then prime minister Tony Blair, citing national

interests, Gardiner was struggling to make ends meet. “I started doing cleaning jobs, I

 worked cleaning churches,” he says, adding that he told himself at the time: “This is the real

 world, this is what it is all about.” Vindication would take another four years, when the US

fined BAE $400m and found the company guilty of lying about its dealings, including those

 with a Saudi prince.

David Morgan is neither surprised that so many people turn a blind eye to fraud and abuse,

nor that corporations and even those in authority fight back – often viciously – against those

trying to expose them. He likens the whistleblower to the child in the tale of “The Emperor’s

New Clothes”. “It is this kind of seeming authority, like the emperor’s, that blinds us from

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seeing things as they really are, while also silencing those who see things differently. Fear of 

ridicule and rejection are powerful disincentives,” says Morgan. “The whistleblower requires

guts. He takes a great risk challenging a human desire for certainties in an uncertain world,

and therefore has to endure being made to carry all the uncertainties him- or herself, before

truth is allowed to come to the fore or not.”

. . .

 Within the whistleblower community, there is a lively debate about how Britain’s legislation

stacks up against that of the US. In the UK’s favour, its laws cover anyone, regardless of who

employs them, and offer a relatively uniform approach. In the US, employees can be treated

differently from state to state. In the opinion of many whistleblowers, however, the US is far

ahead of the UK because it encourages serious whistleblowers and the lawyers who

represent them. Not only is there a whistleblowing ombudsman, but the US’s varying and

sometimes overlapping regulators have also shown a greater willingness to pursue

companies for alleged wrongdoing.

One of the hottest topics among WBUK members is whether the group should lobby the UK 

government to follow the US’s lead in granting whistleblowers a share of fines that are levied

 with their help. The rewards can be substantial. In 2010 Cheryl Eckard, a former quality 

control manager at GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceuticals group, was awarded $96m

of a $750m criminal and civil settlement between US regulators and her former employer,

 whose executives had ignored and then tried to cover up her warnings of contamination

problems at its drug factory in Puerto Rico.This week the US Internal Revenue Service

awarded former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld $104m for revealing a tax evasion scheme

that cost the US government billions of dollars.

Many of the City- and industry-based whistleblowers like the idea of such payments. They 

reason that it would reward the whistleblower, help under-staffed regulators do their job and

generate greater interest in whistleblower cases from UK law firms, which today see little

upside. The doctors, nurses and carers are more reticent. “If you bring money into it, you

might end up with people saying they are whistleblowers when they are not. The biggest

reward for me would have been that we would have improved our service and prevented[the death of] Baby P,” says Holt, adding with irony: “Of course we would never have known

that we prevented it.”

But money already plays a big part in whistleblowing, given that the current legal path in the

UK usually leads through an employment tribunal where winning or compromising often

involves a financial settlement with a non-disclosure clause. Holt says she was first offered

£80,000, and, once the Baby P scandal hit, the reward for her silence was raised to

£120,000. After discussing it with her family, she turned down both. Almost all the

 whistleblowers in the room were at some point offered money in return for keeping quiet.

But taking the money can come with serious drawbacks. Paul Moore, who as head of group

regulatory risk at Hbos says he warned its board that the company’s “sales culture was

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significantly out of balance with their systems and controls”, accepted a settlement that

included a gagging clause. The decision was far from easy and the aftermath a long way from

comforting. “You have to factor in the emotional turmoil that makes it very difficult to

discern things in a balanced way. I felt schizophrenic in my soul,” he says, adding that he felt

like Judas when he decided to take the settlement after a lengthy battle to be heard.

“Everything was gagged. They even gag your wife! You simply cannot believe what state I

 was in,” he says, describing how he slid women’s pads under his armpits to stop the profusesweating triggered by stress. “By that stage my drinking had got to the point [where] I could

drink a bottle of vodka in under two hours with no trouble at all. Imagine what that did to

my family and children. I felt suicidal. I felt useless.”

Eventually, Moore found strength in his faith and sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous.

 After watching Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, he made the decision to break his silence.

By then it was too late to save Hbos, but, he says, it allowed him to use his experience to

inform the debate on how to avoid another banking crisis.

Moore says he initially settled on the advice of his lawyers, and because, after feeling

rebuffed by the Hbos board and ignored by the FSA, he thought his concerns would never be

taken seriously. He believes that had the odds not been so strongly stacked against him and

others in his position, more people would have come forward, possibly helping to avert the

financial crisis.

Every time a whistleblower is ignored or silenced, the odds of someone breaking away from

the group and speaking out are diminished, while the hand of those who seek to cover up

 wrongdoing is strengthened. But the whistleblowers of the past decade are determined to

ensure the next generation is better protected by stronger laws and the support of those

 who have gone before them.

“How do you think y ou are going to do that? What are the weapons?” asks Foxley, the

former lieutenant colonel. “You are in a war for hearts and minds and the soul of the country.

 And the weapons you use are effectively going to be the media. You have to reassure y our

supporters, persuade the unpersuaded and deter the ones who would act against you.”

Success will come when blowing the whistle on even the most sensitive transgressions becomes less risky than covering them up.

Today the whistleblowers are still hashing out their message. Another major issue yet to be

resolved is where to find the money to allow WBUK to graduate from a place whistleblowers

can go for a sympathetic chat to one that changes laws. WBUK intends to be part of the

debate and some of its members have already been asked to submit evidence to the

Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.

The group also needs funding to help pay for whistleblowers’ legal and psychological support

– and perhaps even the odd mortgage bill. That may not be so easy, because unlike many 

other charities, WBUK plans not to take donations from government organisations or

companies.

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“Ideally I’d like to find a really philanthropic billionaire who says. “You know, I like what you

are doing. You are a bunch of ballsy, brave people who just won’t lie down,” says Foxley.

Some of the group already have some fundraising experience, having started whistleblower

charities within their own sector that could eventually come under the umbrella of WBUK.

Holt’s Patients First advocates for openness and accountability within the NHS; Moore is in

the process of creating City Whistle, which aims to help financial whistleblowers; and Chubb

has established Compassion in Care. The former care worker now carries out independent

undercover inspections of problematic care homes up and down the country.

Chubb did indeed manage to escape Isard House that evening with the photocopies she had

hidden under a batch of towels in the bathroom until her shift was over. She carried the

notes with her from an employment tribunal to the high court, where she failed to gain

exposure for her cause. It was only after she told her story and went to the press that the

alleged abuse at Isard House, and eventually the sorry state of a large portion of the UK’s

privatised elder care system, began to come to light.

 As Chubb and the others lay the foundations for WBUK, Isard House has since been vacated

of its elderly patients and their carers, and is awaiting sale and possible demolition.

Carola Hoyos is the FT’s defence correspondent.

.......................................................................

Eileen Chubb

‘Before this happened, I thought I lived in a civilised culture.

 Now I have no doubt that I do not live in a civilised culture’ 

Eileen Chubb was working at Isard House, a care home for the

elderly, when she noticed signs of abuse. She says she got little

help from managers even though she escalated it to more senior

executives. She took copied work documents to an employment

tribunal and even to the high court, but failed to gain exposure for her cause. It was only 

 when she eventually went to the media that the issue of alleged abuse at Isard House and

other homes was brought to light.

Peter Gardiner

‘There is a culture here in England of covering things up that 

are in the national interest’ 

In the 1990s BAE had a £60m fund for expenses related to

travel, medical care and other activities by Saudi officials. Peter

Gardiner’s travel and concierge company took care of the Saudis’

©Gino Sprio

©Gino Sprio

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needs and then expensed BAE for the cost. Gardiner handed the

SFO many documents that suggested BAE could be bribing Saudi officials, but Tony Blair

quashed the investigation in 2006. Gardiner helped the US Department of Justice, which

eventually fined BAE $400m after finding it had lied about payments, including those made

in regards to Saudi Arabia.

Ian Foxley 

‘In Britain there is still the idea of the whistleblower as the

school sneak – and you shouldn’t reward the school sneak you

should debag him’ 

In early 2011 Ian Foxley handed the Serious Fraud Office a huge

number of emails suggesting the defence contractor he worked

for had made questionable payments of at least £11.5m to

Cayman Island bank accounts and bestowed lavish gifts of cars upon Saudi generals. Thecompany, GPT Special Project Management, a subsidiary of pan-European EADS, is now 

under criminal investigation by the SFO.

Kim Holt

‘I have sort of been vindicated. Others never get their careers

back.’ 

In 2006 Kim Holt and three other paediatric consultants warned

Great Ormond Street Hospital that chaos and skeletal staffing at

its Haringey clinic presented a “very high risk” to patients. Holt

says she was bullied and blocked from returning to work after

sick leave. When Baby Peter Connelly died just over a year later, the blame seemed to be

laid disproportionately on the Haringey locum who examined him, so Holt went to the media.

In 2011 Whittington Hospital NHS Trust took over Haringey Children’s Services, and this

 year Holt was able to return to work, though at a different clinic.

Paul Moore

‘I am convinced that we are going to change the legislation and 

make a better world’ 

 As head of group regulatory risk at Hbos, Paul Moore says he

 warned the bank’s board and the Financial Services Authority in

2004 that his employer’s sales culture was out of balance with its

systems and controls. Moore was fired and won a settlement witha gagging clause after he took his employer to court. He broke his silence in 2008, hoping his

story would help inform the debate on how to avoid another financial crisis. Hbos,

meanwhile, went to the brink of collapse. “I am absolutely convinced that, not only are we

©Gino Sprio

©Gino Sprio

©Gino Sprio

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It was Martin Woods’ job to find out whether any of Wachovia

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©Gino Sprio

©Gino Sprio

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