Simon Andriesz

Simon Andriesz died in September 2026, aged 57. His death was reported by The Banker on 2 October 2026 and confirmed by Andy Agathangelou, founder of the Transparency Task Force, who said: "It is with great sadness that we share the news that Simon Andriesz, a valued member of our community, passed away last week." US Representative Thomas Massie also confirmed his death on X. The exact date and place of death have not been made public.

The Banker reported that he had died by suicide. This has not been officially confirmed: no cause of death has been released by the authorities, and neither Agathangelou nor Massie gave a cause when announcing his death. No coroner's finding has been published.

No funeral or memorial arrangements had been announced publicly at the time this page was written.

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Little has been published about Simon Andriesz's early life. He was British, and was 57 at the time of his death in 2026, which places his birth in the late 1960s. His exact date and place of birth have not been reported by reputable sources.

He went on to build a career in financial markets that, according to The Banker, lasted more than 35 years.

Andriesz worked for many years in financial markets and rose to become a managing director at BGC Partners, a financial brokerage that is part of the Cantor Fitzgerald group led by Howard Lutnick. BGC is now known as BGC Group.

In 2016 he raised concerns internally about accounting irregularities at the firm. He was dismissed in 2017. Some of his allegations later contributed to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordering BGC Financial to pay a $3 million penalty in 2019 for numerous supervision, reporting and record-keeping violations, and the regulator granted him a whistleblower award of $420,000. BGC told the BBC that his allegations lacked credibility and were categorically false, that investigations in several jurisdictions had not substantiated them, and that it had not retaliated against him. It said his employment ended after he refused to follow medical advice, declined to perform essential duties, rejected reasonable accommodation and abandoned his role.

In 2020 and 2021, while speaking to the FBI during an investigation into some of his allegations about the firm, he said that Lutnick had undeclared business ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The FBI did not investigate those accusations.

When the US government released millions of pages of Epstein files, Andriesz discovered records of his own FBI interviews among them. He suspected the files held more and, knowing that Cantor Fitzgerald executives preferred to use initials, searched for "HWL", for Howard William Lutnick. He found emails from 2018 in which Epstein asked the HWL account about the prospects of Adfin, a digital advertising company in which Epstein and Cantor Fitzgerald had both invested, and received a reply that the company was finally producing revenue. He also found documents showing that a Cantor Fitzgerald firm had discussed a plan in 2013 to lend £1 million to a company controlled by the then Prince Andrew, a deal that came to nothing.

He shared the Adfin emails with the House Oversight Committee ahead of Lutnick's appearance there in May 2026. Lutnick told the committee that, to the best of his knowledge, he had only learned that year that Epstein was an investor in the company. Democrats on the committee accused him of lying and called for his resignation. The Commerce Department described the allegations as a partisan distraction and said there was no evidence of wrongdoing, and Lutnick has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

In July 2026 the BBC published his account, by investigations correspondent Andy Verity and colleagues, alongside the File on 4 Investigates episode The Epstein Files: Lutnick, the Royals and the British Whistleblower.

By 2026 Andriesz was living in a quiet seaside village in Cornwall, which the BBC described as a world away from Wall Street. He told the BBC that the litigation of the previous decade had had a devastating effect on his career, his finances and his health.

After the BBC programme was broadcast he spoke at an event held by the Transparency Task Force, a campaign group for transparency in financial services, describing what he saw as the UK regulator's mistreatment of whistleblowers and the personal cost of coming forward to his career, his health and his family. He kept details of his private and family life out of public view.

Andriesz is remembered as a whistleblower who spent close to a decade trying to have his concerns heard, first about practices at his former firm and later about Howard Lutnick's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. His knowledge of how Cantor Fitzgerald executives wrote to one another allowed him to find material in the Epstein files that others had missed, and that material was put to a sitting cabinet secretary before Congress.

In his last months he also spoke publicly about the treatment of whistleblowers by the UK regulator, and the Transparency Task Force described him as a valued member of its community.