Lloyds Bank, which targeted the Canary for a financial ‘debanking’ attack, is at the centre of yet another debanking scandal. The financial giant has now debanked Emma Kamio, mother of anti-genocide prisoner Ellie Kamio – and Ellie herself, before she was convicted of any crime. It also refused Emma a mortgage.

And, while it has so far refused to give reasons for its debanking attacks, it admitted that the mortgage refusal was political, citing “adverse media” around the Kamios political activities, as its reason.

Grotesque

Ellie Kamio is one of four Palestine Action activists, convicted of criminal damage to an Israeli weapons factory, who were sentenced as ‘terrorists’ despite facing no terror charges. In fact, the judge in the case ordered his plan to sentence them to longer and stricter punishment to be hidden from jurors and even banned media reporting on it. The four are appealing against the “grotesque” and manifestly unjust sentences.

“Adverse media”

Emma Kamio, who runs a small business in south Wales, had applied to Lloyds – where she and her family have banked all their lives – for a new mortgage with Lloyds on her commercial properties in April. But Lloyds refused the application, stating that:

due to the adverse media it’s not something [we’re] comfortable supporting at this time.

Lloyds even refused an alternative of having the properties transferred to Emma’s sister and giving the sister the mortgage. Emma said the refusal had cost her the properties but that she is unbowed by the institutional victimisation:

[The case has] taken its toll on my business and the remortgage was to help buffer that. The result of Lloyds’ decision has meant me losing the properties, but thankfully my drive for justice is more important to me than money.

As with its attack on the Canary, which is still not fully resolved, Lloyds has refused to give reasons for debanking the Kamios, despite new laws that came into force in April requiring banks to give 90 days written notice and an explanation to their customers.

Lloyds: unaccountable

Anas Mustapha of human rights advocacy group CAGE said that “unaccountable” banks like Lloyds were engaging in blatantly discriminatory practices:

Emma Kamio has nothing to appeal against – just a bank’s discriminatory risk assessment, applied because of her daughter took action to stop the supply chain of deadly weapons used in a genocide.

CAGE called for a public inquiry into this practice years ago, when we saw it happening to Muslim community organisations and our own clients again and again: opaque, unaccountable decisions with no right of appeal.”

Debanking is increasingly being used against left-wing activists and organisations who expose Israel’s crimes. Far-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has also claimed to have been debanked, but in fact was simply refused a specific type of account whose criteria he didn’t meet.

After the initial Lloyds attack, the Canary has suffered a new banking attack, this time by Metro. Readers who can afford to do so are asked to donate via the Canary’s website “to provide immediate support to those members of its team who continue to stand by the Canary and who have been directly affected by the extraordinary circumstances facing the organisation”.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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