A whistleblower was unfairly sacked after raising concerns about his financial services employer, a tribunal has ruled.

Robert James Costain Sutton was employed as a portfolio manager by Creechurch Capital Ltd from 2013 until February 2016 when he lost his £42,000-a-year job.

CCL, part of the Knox Group of Companies founded by multi-millionaire Doug Barrowman, claimed Mr Sutton was dismissed for gross misconduct for using the social media platform WhatsApp to talk to clients.

But an employment tribunal found he was sacked for discussing concerns about the company with the regulator, the Financial Services Authority.

It ruled: ’The claimant was automatically unfairly dismissed because of protected disclosures he had made.’

Mr Sutton had made a suspicious transaction report to the regulator in May 2015, which included the concern that CCL’s records had been falsified in relation to the company’s dealings with two clients, referred by tribunal for reasons of confidentiality as L and P.

He was also interviewed by the FSA during a three-day routine inspection visit by the regulator to CCL in December 2015 where he was asked to produce a transcript of his WhatsApp communications with P since June 2015.

A draft report by the FSA sent to CCL in February 2016 listed nine ’red’ significant breaches by the company of its rules, and four further ’amber’ important breaches.

It stated: ’CCL were receiving instructions, relating to the L relationship, from P and then representing those instructions as recommendations conceived by CCL back to P, who was subsequently approving the trades.

’CCL was not conducting detailed due diligence on the investments that were the subject of these arrangements, instead apparently relying on P.

’The authority’s concerns are aggravated by the wider context of weaknesses identified in the reporting, monitoring and management of compliance issues by CCL’s CEO and board.

’The authority is concerned that the findings as detailed in the report may be indicative of a lack of fitness and propriety of CCL and its directors and key staff...’

Taking his case to the tribunal, Mr Sutton claimed his former employer had attempted to make him a ’scapegoat’ and present him a ’lone rogue’ - their motive being to deflect attention from their own failures and shortcomings.

But in her evidence to the tribunal, company secretary and chief operating officer Mary Brady testified that none of the directors at the time - herself, John Greenwood, Arthur Lancaster and Douglas Barrowman - had been approached by the claimant with any concerns of legal or regulatory malpractice.

She said Mr Sutton had made no attempt whatsoever to engage in the whistleblowing process either to his manager or to any directors.

Mrs Brady said the claimant’s use of WhatsApp had not been sanctioned and he had been acting outside his own procedure.

But the tribunal found that the use of WhatsApp had not been a major issue but ’a walk-on part’ - and the trigger for the start of the process leading to Mr Sutton’s dismissal was the arrival of the FSA report.

It concluded: ’The tribunal has no hesitation in concluding that the primary and principle

reason for dismissal was because Mr Sutton had made protected disclosures.

’Having found that the reason for dismissal was because of the protected disclosures, dismissal on that basis was automatically unfair.’

The tribunal’s finding of unfair dismissal was made in May last year and the decision was unanimously upheld at review in August.

But it was only made public on the employment tribunal’s website at the end of last week after CCL lost its appeal in the high court against the finding that Mr Sutton had been dismissed because of his whistleblowing.

Deemster Rosen QC described the matters as one of the ’utmost seriousness’ and found most of CCL’s grounds of appeal to be ’wholly without any merit’.

He said the use of WhatsApp had provided a record of communications which demonstrated CCL had continued from June to December 2015 to take initiating instructions from P, but purport to initiate recommendations, and act in continuing breach of its regulatory obligations without any apparent steps to rectify this.

There was nothing to indicate any enforcement action was subsequently taken by the FSA and the Deemster said it may be assumed that any violations committed were at some point rectified without any formal action by the regulator.

Compensation for Mr Sutton will be determined at a subsequent tribunal hearing.