John Banerjee was headhunted to work at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) as an emerging markets trader at director level in June 2015. Just over a year later he was dismissed. He claims this is because he blew the whistle on a number of failings at the bank – which put senior managers’ noses out of joint – and is now suing the bank for £13 million.
Banerjee describes in his witness statement a firm with “no effective systems and controls, particularly in compliance” and that important issues were “swept under the carpet”.
He says: “I can say that my time at RBC was extraordinary and never in my career had I experienced such a divergence between policy on the one hand and practice on the other.”
A bank spokesperson said: “We believe this claim to be without merit and are vigorously defending our position.”
Box-ticking culture Shortly after hiring Banerjee, who has been a trader for more than 20 years, RBC put together a global FX sales and trading policy for all FX employees to sign up to. Following the currency rigging investigation that resulted in billion-dollar fines, investment banks came under pressure to instill codes of conduct to keep traders in check.