By Charlie McCarthy From Newsmax

British broadcaster and former Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage said he thinks he has no hope of owning a United Kingdom bank account after being rejected by nine banks.

Farage took to social media on June 29 to say the United Kingdom’s “establishment” had closed his bank accounts. He has said it was for political reasons.

“What transpired last week, I thought, was pretty extraordinary,” Farage said Monday in a video posted on YouTube. “I kept on waiting for replies back from banks. It’s now nine U.K. clearing banks that have rejected me, so I’m beginning to think there is no hope of getting a full U.K. clearing bank to give me an account.

“This, of course, is all because of PEP rules: politically exposed persons.”

Coutts, a prestigious private U.K. bank, told the BBC last week that Farage’s account was closed for falling below the required balance.

“I was pretty shocked, and I hadn’t named Coutts myself, but I was pretty shocked when they briefed the BBC and said that I’ve fallen below their limit of 1 million pounds on a current account,” Farage said.

“Why a bank thinks ethically or legally they can discuss anything about my financial affairs with the BBC and a wider audience is totally and utterly beyond me, and I am taking [legal] advice on that as we speak.”

Farage said he then heard people saying there were Coutts account holders with “nothing like that amount of money there.”

Farage said his case “has exposed many members of the House of Lords and others who have had even grandchildren refused accounts.”

“The difference between all of those people and me … and I’m aiming this comment at the London ‘sneerocracy’ who’s always, on the count of Coutts [saying],  He’ll just have to have a normal bank account like the rest of us,” Farage said. “No, here’s the point. The difference between me and the others is that they have managed to find banking alternatives. I cannot.”

Farage said accounts have been closed due to a European Union directive aimed at stopping money laundering by wealthy people.

“Of course, we want to stop African dictators and whoever it may be laundering tens of millions of pounds,” Farage said in his video. “There is not a single case of a British politician or anybody in their family being caught for laundering money.”

He added that wealthy people aren’t the only ones being affected by the banks’ move to close accounts.

“Anybody involved in cash businesses have been losing accounts because they’re suspected of being money launderers. The whole thing is outrageous,” Farage said.

“The law needs to be revised. Not just for high-profile public figures who are PEPs, but actually for everybody. For all good men and women out there running their own businesses, trying to do their best. They are being penalized in the most extraordinary way.”

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