Time for City to support the accused

IT HAS taken the Serious Fraud Office almost 10 years to bring charges against four men who were, in their day, among the most senior executives of Barclays Bank.

The allegations against them, which were made public on Tuesday, are in connection with the injections of funds the bank received from Qatar and other sources at the height of the banking crisis in 2008.

Even though the investigation has already taken an age it remains likely to be several more years before the cases come to trial, by which time each of the defendants are likely to be considerably less wealthy than they are today.

This is an unfortunate aspect of the British legal system, particularly in fraud cases, where the complexity is such that case preparation can take months and sometimes years.

Add this to the time which can be spent waiting for a court and suitably qualified judge to become available and many years can elapse between charges and the accused appearing. Meanwhile, they may have been denied the ability to earn a living because few organisations will touch them when they are under such a cloud of uncertainty.

An even bigger hit is that the defendants will probably be paying their own legal costs if, as usually happens, their erstwhile employer cuts them loose. Barclays is also a defendant in this case so it remains to be seen if this will happen this time but certainly the prece- dents are not good. Current managements usually like to distance themselves from things which may or may not have gone on in the past.

Insurance policies which can normally be relied upon to mitigate costs in civil cases are also of uncertain value in times like this. They often specifically exclude criminal prosecutions.

You have to question whether this is how the system is meant to work. Being charged must surely be bad without the massive additional financial burden. In several recent cases marriages have collapsed as the legal costs rise into the millions. The potential effect on other family members can weaken the resolve of even the toughest-minded defendant and some certainly have entered a guilty plea for this reason.

There is no easy answer but it does give more reason to consider proposals which have been circulating informally in the City to create a mutual defence fund for practitioners to provide at least some support in cases such as this.

The defendants in the Barclays case are unusual because they are high profile, but the financial burden bites whatever the status of the employee. The trend in regulation, where you do not even have to commit a crime but can be found guilty for failing to prevent one, suggests this is an idea whose time has come.