Whistleblower Simon Andriesz, who raised allegations concerning US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has died by suicide.
Andriesz was previously a managing director at Wall Street firm BGC Group, where Lutnick, now the US commerce secretary, served as chief executive.
The death of the 57-year-old former British banker was confirmed by his friend and adviser, John Robertson.
He told Money Marketing that Andriesz died a week ago at a trauma treatment centre in Thailand, where he had been receiving treatment.
“Simon’s death is devastating. He spent years trying to do what he believed was the right thing, raising serious concerns and asking institutions to listen. Instead, he was left fighting on multiple fronts for far too long,” Robertson said.
“I am not going to speculate about causation, but there now has to be a brutally honest examination of how Simon was treated, what warnings were missed, and whether the systems supposedly there to protect whistleblowers actually protected him at all. If nothing meaningful changes after this, then we will have learned absolutely nothing.”
Jasthi Alom, a former FCA supervisor, said: “I am really saddened by Simon’s death. In line with its usual playbook, the FCA is going to treat this as another ‘lessons learned’ exercise, but this time it needs to be much more than that. If it resists proper public scrutiny, I would seriously question its sincerity and motives.”
Hospitals will likely spend more to protect themselves from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ expanded powers to kick them out of government health programs, which would be ruinous f...