Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

A ten-page whistle­blow­er re­port out­lin­ing con­cerns with­in First Cit­i­zens, in par­tic­u­lar the con­duct and ac­tions of Deputy Chair­man Dr Ster­ling Frost, has been sub­mit­ted to its Board of Di­rec­tors for ur­gent ac­tion.

The re­port, com­plet­ed ac­cord­ing to the Bank’s Whistle­blow­ing Pol­i­cy #284, was sub­mit­ted in March 2026 and fo­cus­es on four main com­plaints: the al­leged mis­use of the Group’s whistle­blow­ing mech­a­nism as an in­stru­ment of co­or­di­nat­ed tar­get­ing; an al­leged struc­tur­al con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween a se­nior man­age­ment role and a board-lev­el po­si­tion that com­pro­mis­es the in­de­pen­dence of crit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion­al process­es; the al­leged over­reach of a board mem­ber in­to op­er­a­tional mat­ters, leav­ing the chief ex­ec­u­tive with­out the ex­ec­u­tive sup­port re­quired to lead the in­sti­tu­tion; and the Board’s al­leged fail­ure to dis­charge its fidu­cia­ry and reg­u­la­to­ry oblig­a­tions in mul­ti­ple ma­te­r­i­al re­spects.