Northern Rock, a government owned bank, announced today that its Chief Financial Officer David Jones has left the bank immediately. The banker has taken this decision as the U. K. Financial Services Authority decided to widen its investigation over the mortgage arrears issue.

The bank said in a statement that Mr. Jones wanted to focus on the ongoing FSA investigation. Northern Rock also said that Mr. Hugh Graham, head of the company's treasury operation, will replace Jones as interim chief financial officer.

"This enables Jones to focus on an ongoing FSA investigation into matters relating to a period before the company entered public ownership," Northern Rock said in a statement.

The Financial Services Authority has confirmed that it is investigating David Jones, who was finance director of Northern Rock from February 2007 to February 2008. FSA said that it wanted to see if Jones knew his colleagues were allowing incorrect statements to be signed off between 2004 and 2008.

FSA has already fined two of the bank's executives for changing bad loan figures. The probe started by FSA when it found that the management of the bank attempts to hide mortgage arrears during the credit crisis. FSA has fined David Baker, former deputy chief executive of Northern Rock, by £504000 and Richard Barclay, former managing credit director, by £140000. FSA also banned these two from working in the financial services sector.