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 The spectacular downfall of Paul Flowers, the former chairman of
Britain's Co-operative Bank, was a tale made for the tabloids. His
troubles began with the near collapse of the bank he was heading.
They came to a head this week when a newspaper released footage that
showed him handing cash to a dealer selling drugs including crystal
meth and ketamine, a farm animal tranquillizer used recreationally
as a hallucinogen.
Flowers, 63, has apologized for his "stupid and wrong behavior," but
his humiliation continues.
He was arrested late Thursday as part of a drug investigation, as
more shadowy details are being dug up about his life.
A local government council said this week that he was found with
"inappropriate" adult material on his work computer when he was an
official there for the opposition Labour Party in 2011. It confirmed
he resigned from that office immediately after.
And the Methodist Church in Britain said Flowers was disciplined and
briefly suspended after he was convicted of drunken driving and an
act of gross indecency years ago.
Those revelations, together with Flowers' poor leadership of his
bank, left many in disbelief: How was a man like him appointed as a
bank chairman in the first place?
That was the question asked by Prime Minister David Cameron, who on
Wednesday ordered an independent inquiry into the role of Flowers at
the Co-op, which he left in June after three years.
"Reverend Flowers has deeply let down the people who entrusted him
to be the chair of the bank," said Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour
Party. "Obviously he has deep questions to answer about that."
Flowers first came under scrutiny in late October, when he failed to
answer basic questions about his bank at a parliamentary committee.
He told the committee that Co-op's total assets were about 3 billion
pounds ($4.83 billion) — they actually total about 47 billion ($75.7
billion).
The company has since fallen deeper into financial trouble. It has
had to plug a 1.5 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) hole in its
finances, and recently agreed to a bailout plan by hedge funds.
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But it was his personal life that became the subject of scandal this
week, when the Mail on Sunday said it had filmed Flowers buying the
drugs in a car just days after the committee hearing.
"This year has been incredibly difficult with a death in the family
and the pressures of my role with the Co-operative Bank," Flowers
said in a statement afterward. "I am sorry for this, and I am
seeking professional help."
West Yorkshire police looked into the allegations days after the
report, and arrested Flowers late Thursday in Merseyside. The
ex-bank boss was released on bail Friday after being questioned at a
police station.
Since the publication of that footage, Flowers has been suspended
from his church and the Labour Party. The chairman of the Co-op
Group, which owns the bank, resigned on Tuesday as the scandal grew.
Britain has had a string of bad bank scandals since the 2008
financial crisis, but the Co-op Bank is the last place many people
would expect things to go so horribly wrong. The company behind it,
the Co-op Group, has built its image on sound values. As the
country's largest mutual society, it has no shareholders but is
owned by its members, and had billed itself as an alternative to the
corporate greed that brought down many other banks.
[Associated
Press; SYLVIA HUI]
Cassandra Vinograd contributed to this report.
Follow Sylvia Hui at
http://twitter.com/sylviahui.
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