\n<\/p>\n
Stay informed with free updates<\/p>\n
Simply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n A tribunal has upheld the chief UK financial regulator\u2019s decision to fine a bank owned by David \u201cSpotty\u201d Rowland and two of its former employees including his son for plotting to devalue Qatar\u2019s currency during a 2017 trade embargo.\u00a0<\/p>\n The judgment is a further blow for Banque Havilland, which has shrunk significantly and been renamed Rangecourt, following a series of legal controversies and regulatory probes in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it is a victory for the Financial Conduct Authority, which lawyers said reinforced its ability to hold companies to account for the actions of their employees by seeing off the challenge against it by Havilland and the two former employees.<\/p>\n The Upper Tribunal said on Tuesday it had reduced the size of the fine imposed by the FCA on the bank from \u00a310mn to \u00a34mn, saying the regulator appeared to have chosen \u201can arbitrary figure\u201d for the penalty.<\/p>\n But the tribunal upheld the action the FCA took against two former employees of the bank in 2023, when it imposed fines of \u00a3325,000 on its ex-UK head Edmund Rowland and \u00a314,200 on its former analyst Vladimir Bolelyy.<\/p>\n It also upheld the FCA\u2019s decision to ban Edmund Rowland and Bolelyy from working in the sector, saying they and the bank were responsible for \u201ca very serious breach\u201d of UK rules that was \u201cdeliberate and encouraged the commission of financial crime and market misconduct\u201d.<\/p>\n The controversy hinged on a presentation drawn up by Bolelyy, a Russian who worked as an analyst at Havilland, outlining a plan to attack the Qatari riyal and break its peg to the US dollar by using a manipulative trading strategy to lower the price of the country\u2019s sovereign bonds.<\/p>\n The presentation, initially dubbed \u201cSetting fire to the neighbour\u2019s house fund\u201d, was created in response to a request by Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala for Havilland to come up with a strategy to reduce the risk from Qatari bonds owned by banks in the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n The tribunal said it was \u201cnot satisfied\u201d that the presentation drawn up by Havilland was ever delivered to Mubadala, adding that \u201cthe strategy was never implemented and there was no actual market manipulation\u201d.<\/p>\n But it rejected the bank\u2019s argument that it could not be held responsible for the presentation because it was not created \u201con bank business\u201d but for a private project of its owners, the Rowland family.<\/p>\n Claire Cross, a partner at law firm Corker Binning and former FCA official, said: \u201cFirms cannot avoid responsibility by merely claiming that the misconduct of their employees was informal, unsanctioned or outside direct supervision.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve Smart, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: \u201cMotivated by greed, Banque Havilland, Mr Rowland and Mr Bolelyy had a plan to seriously damage the Qatari economy. It is right that they have been held to account.\u201d<\/p>\n Luxembourg-based Banque Havilland was created after its acquisition in 2009 by David Rowland, the former Conservative party treasurer and adviser to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, previously known as Prince Andrew.<\/p>\n Since being fined by the FCA and separately having its Eurozone banking licence withdrawn by the European Central Bank in 2024, the lender has wound down its UK operation and sold its Monaco-based business.<\/p>\n The tribunal said it was not satisfied that David Rowland knew about the controversial Qatar presentation. But it found his son, Edmund, was \u201cseeking to benefit the commercial interests of the bank and of the Rowland family generally\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n It also rejected David Rowland\u2019s assertion that the FCA had a \u201cpreconceived case theory or that it had somehow been weaponised by the state of Qatar\u201d.<\/p>\n Rangecourt and lawyers representing Edmund Rowland and Bolelyy did not respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. A tribunal has upheld the chief UK financial regulator\u2019s decision to fine a bank owned by David \u201cSpotty\u201d Rowland and two of its former employees including his son for plotting to devalue Qatar\u2019s currency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[22788,83,3201,22789,1866,8001,846],"class_list":{"0":"post-43645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-banque","9":"tag-decision","10":"tag-fine","11":"tag-havilland","12":"tag-regulators","13":"tag-tribunal","14":"tag-upholds"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}