A former executive at the Blue Hills Bank in Hyde Park, now whistleblower Graham Waiting, has filed a whistleblower case saying he was unlawfully fired for complaining about alleged accounting irregularities, illegal investments, and fraudulent bookkeeping. Waiting, a former senior vice president and treasurer also says he tried to stop the improper practices urging immediate reforms.
Waiting said he was improperly fired several months after bringing his complaints to federal banking regulators.
According to the lawsuit, senior bank executives saw the federal Small Business Lending Fund as a cheap way of raising capital and that the bank the bank spent some of the $18.7 million it received from the program on investments rather than small business loans.
He alleges the bank exaggerated the number of small-business loans it had made and altered the classifications of other loans so they would appear to meet the program’s requirements all to reduce the repayments Blue Hills owed the government. He also alleges the bank had a slow, outdated accounting system and that it broke promises to regulators by failing to review risky investments outside companies were making on its behalf.
Blue Hills Bank operates nine branch offices in Brookline, Dedham, Hyde Park, Nantucket, Norwood, and West Roxbury and it had about $1.6 billion in assets as of September. The bank reported deposits of $1.5 billion as of June.
Jeffrey Newman represents whistleblowers
