Trust in Fate, not Bad Blood
The walls begin to close in. The banking world, the national press, and Julian’s personal life create a pressure cooker. Navigating another high-pressure relocation to the UK while managing the fallout of a crumbling marriage and a life-altering medical crisis, Julian found himself at his lowest ebb. However, amidst the ‘bad blood’ of corporate whistleblowing and domestic betrayal, a chance encounter at a local point-to-point race suggested that even in the chaos, a new map of destiny had been drawn and a guardian angel was about to walk in and change everything.
“From 2013 until 2018, turmoil, instability, stress and ill-health mounted. As 2014 progressed, it was clear that my new employer (Société Générale) was starting to get very ‘interested’ in me being a Whistleblower. I had admitted it all on my induction forms; they knew I had blown the whistle on another bank due to sanctions evasion, but the intensity of their enquiries grew. We later discovered that Standard Chartered’s Head of Compliance had been speaking with Société Générale’s counterpart, bad-mouthing me. It got aggressive. A new job appointment became a move to the UK, and stability was at an all-time low at home. That move came with its own unique conditions, to rent Rod Stewart’s old house - Copsem Manor in Esher - a monstrous property, right opposite John Terry, the footballer. The months continue to pass by. The stress continues to build. And lines continue to be crossed. We were now months away from the first Financial Times article - A Whistleblower Emerges, in this case - being published. Press interest in the story grew rapidly, with the likes of the Daily Mirror rifling through our bins illegally. That was really the beginning of me being publicly outed. My stress levels had been creeping up significantly ever since the issues with Société Générale shifted into a territory spotted with bad blood. We relocated to Lincolnshire in the hope that the countryside would help turn the gas down on everything that was boiling over. I found out my wife (at the time) was having numerous affairs, was trying to do my job at work and my best at home with her unpredictable absences. It went on, and on. In 2017, I had a massive seizure, a moment that led me, one way or another, to Erika.”
By 2013, Julian was knee-deep in deciphering the Billion Dollar Briefcase files, plotting a return to finance. But the cracks in his marriage were growing, and splitting the family further apart. Julian travelled alone to New York in May 2013 to revive his career; his second wife, pregnant with their fourth child together, stayed put in Germany at Buzzard’s Eyrie and would not join him until 2014, almost a year later.
Julian had started working for his old Bank, Société Générale, in their office in Manhattan, as Head of Foreign Exchange, Risk and Sales Trading, working under the 0-1 Visa, normally reserved for pro-athletes, film stars and rock gods.
Within that 12-month period, Julian didn’t return home. He didn’t see his children. He worked every hour, every holiday, to ecru enough leave so when his son, Perry, arrived in December that year, he would be able to spend time with the family’s new addition.
Perry’s arrival in itself wasn’t quite the celebration it should have been. An emergency C-section and a horrific ordeal that - if it had panned out anyway would have seen both mother and son perish - saw his wife’s previous C-section scar tissue rupture, and an emergency operation performed in a make-shift theatre in the closest German hospital to them.
The time they both spent alone, the premature arrival of Perry, the recovery time and life with a newborn back together in Germany. Turmoil simmered. In the months that followed Perry’s arrival, it was agreed that the family would move to New York, which they did in February 2014. Reluctantly.
“As 2014 progressed, it was clear that Société Générale were starting to get very ‘interested’ in me being a Whistleblower. I had admitted it correctly on my induction forms that I had blown the whistle on another bank due to sanctions evasion, but the intensity of their enquiries grew. We later discovered that Standard Chartered’s Head of Compliance had been speaking with Société Générale’s counterpart, bad-mouthing me. It got aggressive. So bad that I began exploring other opportunities and was shortly offered a job in a hedge fund called Dynamic (run by a former Cargill exec that had big money invested from Man Group - my former employer before Standard Chartered). I waved ‘goodbye’ to Société Générale, a disappointing end to a relationship that had lasted for 12 years.”
In the midst of this new job appointment, a last-minute turn of events saw Dynamic decide to relocate its Swiss office to London, and they had Julian lined up to run operations from the UK.
But much like the move to New York, a relocation to the UK wasn’t quite that simple. Or remotely on the cards. It came at a time when this wife’s actions were unpredictable and growing increasingly unlawful.
“Before we left New York, she got so drunk she jumped out of the car we were travelling in and then accused me of assault by auto, saying I actually pushed her out of the vehicle.”
Stability was at an all-time low at home, so another move so soon after touching down in New York came with its own outrageous demands from Julian’s wife; to rent Rod Stewart's old house - Copsem Manor in Esher - a monstrous property, right opposite John Terry, the footballer. The months continue to pass by. The stress continues to build. And lines continue to be crossed.
“We were now months away from the first Financial Times article - A Whistleblower Emerges, in this case. Press interest in the story grew rapidly, with the likes of the Daily Mirror crossing lines and rifling through our bins illegally. That was really the beginning of me being publicly outed.
“Naturally, my stress levels had been creeping up significantly ever since the issues with Société Générale shifted into a territory spotted with bad blood. At home, things weren’t any better with my wife. One morning, there was an incident with the kids. It resulted in her deliberately crashing the car into a wall and going into the children’s school, and breaking down in front of the headmaster. She was put on some serious medication at that point, but I knew we just couldn’t go on like this.
“It occurred to me that getting further away from London, relocating to the countryside, could be beneficial, help calm things down. I grew up around the Mansfield, Nottingham area, but had been posted at RAF Cranwell previously; my best friend was at Cranwell at the time. Lincolnshire just made sense. I could still get into London for work. We could get some land up here, I could get my wife into horse riding to help her clear her mind, and get her outside. Turn the gas down on all of this and make it a lot easier. The reality was that it was always destined to collapse. I found out through an admission from my secretary that my wife was having numerous affairs - little did I know she was deep into the jockey circuit, as it were - and her mental state had continued to decline.
“Once I got wind of the affairs, that was the nail in the coffin. We went through a process of separation, made all the more difficult by remaining in the same property. Something unavoidable. With her long-term affairs - with various jockeys on the national hunt - and drink and drugs into the mix, it was a melting pot. Her priorities massively shifted when she was introduced to these elements. She would just literally barge the kids out of the way to go down to his place in Wiltshire to get high. I wouldn't know where she was, or how long she’d be there. I was trying to do my job at work and my best at home with her unpredictable absences.
“This just went on, and on to the point when, in 2017, I had a massive seizure. I was doing the post-run in the office. I guess at that point, I was quite poorly. I was medically signed off from work for a year, which takes us into 2018. I had about 30 seizures throughout this period, all of a lesser intensity, and I was going through an incredible amount of testing being undertaken by doctors because of my situs inversus condition.
“It’s a weird condition, that’s actually usually attributed to embryology. I only found this out since going for past life regression. I didn’t ever really understand why this had happened to me, how I ended up with the condition, but when I was in utero, my mother spent about four or five months in the hospital. My father, in fact, everyone, blamed it on an iron deficiency. According to the Medium who explored my past lives, I was an identical twin, but my twin brother was lost in the early stages of the pregnancy.
“There’s a process called absorption, where the twin fetus is absorbed into the lining of the uterine wall, leaving the remaining twin to thrive. It’s called Vanishing Twin Syndrome. I could never actually figure out how it all fit together, but having past life regression was incredibly eye-opening. I met my twin; he came into the room and sat next to me. The Medium described him as, you know, being basically identical but a lot louder than I am. You see, Situs Inversus rarely happens at all, let alone to singular babies. It tends to emanate from identical twins, more specifically, “mirror-image” identical twins. It was an explanation for my condition that I would have never considered, and for how apparently different we would have been in character. A mirror image of each other.
“I’m a firm believer that there’s a destiny map within us all. When we come to this life, there’s a journey waiting for us. It might not be obvious which path leads where, and you might not know why the hell you're going on this journey, but it guides you. There’s a drive within you that you know you’ve got to accept; you can't change it. That’s the map, it’s always there.
“But I’ve always had that outlook, it was an influence imprinted on me by my Mother. She taught me a lot about fate, destiny and that kind of faith. She’d had relationships with Mediums when I grew up, using them to connect to the truth she was looking for; the affairs my father had had, for example. She wanted to find out what’s going on. So, I’d always been exposed to ‘faith’ and the world of souls as a child.
“In October of 2017, I went to see a Medium in Birmingham for a health check and Tarot reading. As she turned the cards over, my hands began to shake. As it turned out, now looking back, card after card, each one predicted the future. The centre piece of that future was a lady called Erika.”
Diary Entry
Horses for courses, as it turned out
2017 | Lincolnshire
Erika. Julian’s guardian angel, in a way. Today, she is his wife, but at that point in Julian’s life, she entered as a beacon of light, a source of hope, reason, truth and love.
After the Knight family arrived in Lincolnshire, when Julian’s wife (at the time) found a new ‘interest’ in horse racing and the jockeys who rode the circuit, point-to-points became a staple entry in their social calendar. Just as they were in Erika’s…
“I was heavily involved with horses, and my husband at the time was training to do some basic jockeying, despite being mid-50s and having no chance of succeeding. But, he wanted to do it because I was into horses, and as a very obstinate man, I knew the best thing was just to let him get on with it.
“After Jules had his big seizure, so we are in Spring 2017, I was at a point-to-point with my husband, and I just couldn’t find him. Things between us were over, really, but not officially. We’d had months and months of marriage guidance, and it wasn't going anywhere. But we'd gone to this point-to-point and he’d just vanished to find people who would want to hear his stories of riding horses. Our three kids were all running around like complete headless chickens and couldn’t find him either. Then I looked over and saw him talking to this dark-haired woman. I didn’t know who she was, and I didn’t ask any questions.
“But, four weeks later, at the next point-to-point, there she was again. She came over to us and was saying ‘hi, hi’ to my husband. And I was thinking, “Oh, that’s that woman he was talking to before”. Didn’t really care, you know, it was just non-consequential. But then, as she’s talking, Jules appeared too, seemingly with her, but not with her, much like my husband and me.
“Jules was looking after his kids just like I was trying to keep tabs on mine. And when he left, I asked, “Who was that?” My husband simply said, “Oh, some woman I was talking to the other week, but she seems to really like jockeys. So I was telling her all about my training”.
“The following point-to-point was in May. Jules was now six, maybe eight weeks past his seizures, and we were all together again. I’d taken a big picnic this time, had all the kids there, and again, Jules and his wife were there. They came over, she and my partner immediately peeled away to talk ‘horses’, Jules brought the kids over, and we dived into the picnic. We sat chatting for a little bit while the other two were all over each other. After the picnic, Jules insisted on returning the favour and invited us all over for a barbecue, acknowledging how odd the situation actually was in the process.
“My husband was very happy to have this short-term horsemanship ego stroked; it was more time to spend with Julian’s wife, who would ask those jockey-type questions, so over we went about a week after the picnic. We ended up down at the stables looking at her horses, but one seemed lame, so I hitched up my dress, climbed over this gate to go down to the horse and pick its foot up. It had an infection, so I went off to sort the horse out and dress its foot, and returned to the barbecue to sort out the kids. Jules was still in the garden with the children, watching them all and playing. I joined him, and the other two stayed out of sight down at the stables, looking at the equine inventory.
“We got chatting about each of our situations; neither of us were getting on with our spouses. I knew my marriage was over, and Jules knew about the affairs at that point. It was bizarre to us that we were both in the same place. Both mega busy trying to run our own lives and look after our kids, but our partners were just doing everything that’s focused on them, seemingly intent on destroying everything else.
“Another meeting was orchestrated. Any and every excuse came out at this point for them to spend more time talking about jockeys and training. Which always put Jules and me in a position where we’d be together, just talking. So, when Jules had to have more investigations for his seizures, they wanted him to travel down to London for treatments. But he wasn’t allowed to drive or come down unassisted on a train. His wife had no intention of helping whatsoever, and his brothers were nowhere around. He asked me to go with him, “Will you come down and just be my sherpa, keep me company and of course, safe?” So, I went.
“One day, I told Julian I’d left my husband. He told me he and his wife had split up. And that day, everything changed.”
