Players in the Doha payments saga that shook banking

Three former Barclays executives were acquitted in London over claims they funnelled £322 million (Dh1.51 billion) in secret payments to Qatar in return for £4bn of rescue funding during the 2008 international banking crisis.

A jury cleared the men of fraud on Friday after a complex £10m, eight-year investigation into the circumstances behind a series of payments to Qatar.

Qatar, a major investor in Britain and still a significant Barclays shareholder, was not investigated nor accused of wrongdoing. It did not cooperate with investigators working on the case.

The acquittals are a serious blow to the prosecutors seeking to hold executives to account over their roles during the financial crisis that forced taxpayers to spend hundreds of billions of pounds in bailing out banks.

Here are the key players in the Barclays saga and ensuing trial:

Sheikh Hamad bin Jaber Al Thani

Sheikh Hamad was the key figure behind investments in the UK while he was prime minister of Qatar and head of the sovereign wealth fund.

The Qataris were involved in deals to buy stakes in key London landmarks and institutions including hotels, upmarket property and the upmarket department store,

Harrods. Qatar, which is a partowner of Heathrow airport, expressed an interest at the time of the capital-raising operation in 2008 in investing in Gatwick, the capital’s second main airport, emails showed.

Sheikh Hamad owns a flat in a Qatari-backed development overlooking Hyde Park in London, part of an estimated £30bn of Qatari investments in the UK. Of the most controversial investment, the purchase of a stake in Barclays, he told the UK’s Financial Times newspaper in 2016 that he had no regrets.

“No, I think it’s a good investment. I regret the noise. We thought we had helped the British economy at a bad time and that someone would thank us for it,” he said.

Sheikh Hamad stepped down as prime minister and head of the sovereign wealth fund in 2013.

Roger Jenkins

Mr Jenkins, 64, was the central figure in securing Qatari funds and was recommended for a £25m bonus for his work on the deals.

He met Sheikh Hamad in 2007 and was the “gatekeeper” between the bank’s board and the Qataris as they sought investment during the 2008 financial crisis.

He has been known as Britain’s best-paid banker, earning bonuses of £36m in 2007 and £19m in 2009.

The court heard how he worked 80 to 90 hours a week for the bank and suffered a heart attack during the financial crisis of 2008, but returned to work weeks later. He held about £60m of shares in the bank and when he left in 2009, he had amassed a £120m fortune, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

John Varley

John Varley was chief executive of Barclays from 2004 to 2010, a period that covered the most turbulent years in British and global banking since the 1930s.

His strategy to secure £11bn in funding from investors rather than rely on a taxpayer bailout meant it was able to keep its independence from the government, unlike many of its rivals. During his time in charge, he also secured the investment banking arm of Lehman Brothers in North America, which was stricken by the subprime mortgage crisis.

He played a central role in meeting and negotiating with the Qataris and became the highest-ranking banker to be charged over the fallout from the 2008 crisis.

He was charged in 2017 but the case against him was thrown out because of insufficient evidence.

Bob Diamond

Bob Diamond, the man who succeeded John Varley, was famously described as the “unacceptable face of banking” by Lord Mandelson, a senior minister in Gordon Brown’s government. The comment was prompted by claims that he earned tens of millions of pounds for his work at Barclays.

At the time of the capitalraising operation, he headed the Barclays Capital division and was involved in efforts to woo Gulf-based investors. He was interviewed under caution by Serious Fraud Office investigators but never charged.

He became the chief executive in January 2011 but was forced to quit the following year after the bank was fined a record sum for trying to manipulate interbank lending rates.