Ireland boosts its budget package

Faces ‘no-deal’ hit

DUBLIN, Oct 8, (RTRS): Ireland presented a no-deal Brexit budget for 2020 on Tuesday, pledging a 1.2 billion-euro package to keep companies afloat by allowing the state’s finances to return to deficit if Britain leaves the European Union without a transition period.

With Britain’s latest scheduled exit from the EU just three weeks away, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe made the call last month to assume the worst, eschewing the tax cuts and spending increases of recent years to set aside funds for exposed businesses.

Donohoe gave the booming economy a 2.9 billion-euro boost, mostly through pre-committed extra spending in areas such as infrastructure and public-sector pay – a far cry from the savage austerity budgets of a decade ago, after Ireland’s financial crisis.

“This is a budget without precedent ... A budget that has been developed in the shadow of Brexit,” Donohoe told parliament in what could be his last budget of this parliament. His Fine Gael party favours a May 2020 election.

“This does not mean that no-deal is inevitable. But equally we stand ready if it does happen. It is a challenge Ireland has the measure of.”

Ireland is considered the most vulnerable to Brexit among remaining EU members because of its close trade links and shared land border with the United Kingdom. The Irish government has warned economic growth could nearly halt next year, putting up to 80,000 jobs at risk, if Britain crashes out of the bloc.

While some British lawmakers think that threat will force Ireland into a lastminute concession in negotiations, Britain’s smaller neighbour is approaching the Oct 31 Brexit deadline with an economy that has grown faster than any other in the EU each year since 2014.

Donohoe spent the first 15 minutes of his hour-long speech detailing how the government would seek to meets the demands of companies that would be hurt the most a chaotic Brexit.

Just over half his package, which excludes additional funds promised by the EU, will support agriculture, enterprise and tourism, with 220 million euros deployed immediately in a no- deal Brexit to help vulnerable but viable companies adjust.

The contingency fund – which Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said he hoped the government would never have to draw down – was broadly welcomed by business groups.

“The approach taken by the government to plan for a ‘no deal’ Brexit is a prudent one that will best help protect business and trade in the uncertain days and weeks ahead,” said British Irish Chamber of Commerce Director General John McGrane LONDON, Oct 8, (RTRS): Three former Barclays executives lied to the market by hiding 322 million pounds ($395 million) in extra fees that the bank paid Qatar in return for vital funding during the global credit crisis, a prosecutor told a London court on Tuesday.

The case, one of the most high-profile brought by the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO), revolves around undisclosed payments to Qatar as Barclays raised more than 11 billion pounds from investors in 2008 to avert a state bailout.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Edward Brown alleged that Roger Jenkins, Tom Kalaris and Richard Boath pretended commissions paid to Qatar in 2008 were fees for separate, commercially valuable advisory services agreements (ASAs).

“Telling lies in this way, say the prosecution, is a criminal offence,” Brown told the jury at London’s Old Bailey criminal court in a trial scheduled to last up to five months.

“It is committing fraud by false representations. They acted dishonestly, say the prosecution, in order to preserve the future of the bank and to preserve their own positions.”

The men, aged between 60 and 64, deny wrongdoing.

The case hinges on what Barclays told the market in public documents, such as the prospectuses and subscription agreements that outlined the fees and commissions that the bank paid to investors, including former Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani.

Brown alleged that Barclays swept aside established banking practices of telling the truth in public documents about the terms on which investors were backing the bank as the credit crunch roiled markets, in order to secure around four billion pounds of investment from wealthy Qatar over 2008.

He alleged that the defendants used a “carefully contrived mechanism” to hide the additional fees with two Advisory Service Agreements that were not genuine, but a dishonest way of paying the Qataris extra and hiding the fees from the wider world.

The men sat impassively in the narrow, raised glass-surrounded dock.

The seven-year case is a rare example of a criminal prosecution of senior bankers at a global bank over conduct during the credit crunch more than a decade ago – and a high stakes trial for the SFO.

Jenkins is the former chairman of investment banking in the Middle East and north Africa, Kalaris headed the bank’s wealth division at the time and Richard Boath was the investment bank division’s head of corporate finance in EMEA.

Jenkins, 64, Kalaris, 63, and 60-year-old Boath are each charged with substantive fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

The three men each face both charges over the June capital raising, which include an allegation they conspired with former finance director Chris Lucas to make dishonest representations in public documents for profit or to expose others to loss.

Jenkins also faces both charges over the second fundraising four months later.

Lucas has not been charged because he is too ill to stand trial, the jury was told. Qatar, a major investor in Britain, has not been accused of wrongdoing.