Trio are cleared of £322m Barclays-Qatar fees fraud
THE Serious Fraud Office was dealt a blow yesterday after three former Barclays bankers were acquitted of helping to funnel £322million in secret fees to Qatar for emergency funding.
An Old Bailey jury took less than six hours to clear Roger Jenkins, 64, Thomas Kalaris, 64, and Richard Boath, 61 of fraud after a five-month trial, the first of UK bank executives over the 2008 financial crisis.
The SFO charged the trio in 2017 after a lengthy probe into two multibillion cash calls with Qatar, enabling Barclays to avoid a state bailout.
It alleged lucrative terms given to Qatar were hidden from the market and other investors through bogus advisory service agreements.
Jenkins was said to be the “gatekeeper” of Barclays’ relationship with Qatar in his role as head of investment banking in the Middle East and North Africa. Kalaris ran its wealth unit and
Boath headed up its financial institutions group for the same regions.
The prosecution claimed they had “acted dishonestly in order to preserve the future of the bank and to preserve their own positions”, an allegation dismissed as “preposterous” by Boath’s QC Bill Boyce.
The three men denied wrongdoing. Boath said he was “surprised” about the case, accusing the SFO of “complete invention”. He said if there was a case it should have been against the board but “none of the defendants were on the board, had any access to the board”.
An SFO spokesperson said: “Wherever our evidential and public interest tests are met, we will always endeavour to bring this before a court.”
Former Barclays chief executive John Varley had already been acquitted due to insufficient evidence, while Barclays was cleared in 2018 of fraud and giving “unlawful financial assistance”.