LONDON: The most senior bankers to face criminal charges in Britain over conduct during the financial crisis will appear before a London jury next week in a trial that will test the mettle of the Serious Fraud Office.
Former Barclays CEO John Varley and three one-time colleagues stand charged over deals with Qatari investors to secure cash injections that allowed the bank, that can trace its origins back to around 1690, to survive the crisis a decade ago.
The trial, scheduled to start on Monday and slated to last for up to four months, is expected to begin with lengthy legal, procedural arguments before prosecutors open their case.
Varley, who married into one of the families that helped build Barclays, Roger Jenkins, the one-time chairman of the Middle Eastern banking arm, Tom Kalaris, an American former wealth division CEO and Richard Boath, a former European divisional head, are charged with conspiracy to commit fraud.
Varley, renowned for trademark bright braces and Jenkins, now based in California, also face a separate charge of unlawful financial assistance — a practice of companies lending money to fund the purchase of their own stock.
Lawyers for Boath and Kalaris declined to comment, while legal representatives for the other defendants did not respond to requests for comment.
When charges were filed in June 2017, a lawyer for Jenkins said his client would vigorously defend himself against the allegations. Boath said at the time he had no case to answer.
Barclays secured around £12 billion ($15 billion) in emergency funds from mainly Gulf investors as markets plunged in 2008, allowing it to avoid the state bailouts taken by rivals Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds.
Qatar Holding — part of the Qatar Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund — and Challenger, an investment vehicle of former Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, invested about £6 billion in the bank.
But the SFO, which prosecutes serious white collar crime, has charged the men over “capital raising arrangements” with Qatar Holding and Challenger in June and October 2008 and a $3 billion loan facility Barclays made available to Qatar in November 2008.
Qatar, a major investor in Britain, has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Lawyers say the performance of the SFO will be under as much scrutiny as that of the well-heeled defendants after a court threw out its separate charges against Barclays over the capital raising — and a judge last month halted its prosecution of former senior Tesco supermarket managers mid-trial.
Lisa Osofsky, who took the top job at the agency last August, has stood back from handling the Barclays case because of a potential conflict of interest linked to her previous work.
The new year has started briskly for the SFO. Its retrial of three former Barclays traders accused of plotting to rig Euribor global interest rates kicks off on Jan. 14. A jury was unable to reach a verdict in their case last year.
Former Barclays bosses face London trial over Qatari cash call
Former Barclays bosses face London trial over Qatari cash call
- Barclays secured around £12 billion ($15 billion) in emergency funds from mainly Gulf investors as markets plunged in 2008
- Qatar, a major investor in Britain, has not been accused of wrongdoing
Work suspended on Riyadh’s massive Mukaab megaproject: Reuters
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has suspended planned construction of a colossal cube-shaped skyscraper at the center of a downtown development in Riyadh while it reassesses the project's financing and feasibility, four people familiar with the matter said.
The Mukaab was planned as a 400-meter by 400-meter metal cube containing a dome with an AI-powered display, the largest on the planet, that visitors could observe from a more than 300-meter-tall ziggurat — or terraced structure —inside it.
Its future is now unclear, with work beyond soil excavation and pilings suspended, three of the people said. Development of the surrounding real estate is set to continue, five people familiar with the plans said.
The sources include people familiar with the project's development and people privy to internal deliberations at the PIF.
Officials from PIF, the Saudi government and the New Murabba project did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Real estate consultancy Knight Frank estimated the New Murabba district would cost about $50 billion — roughly equivalent to Jordan’s GDP — with projects commissioned so far valued at around $100 million.
Initial plans for the New Murabba district called for completion by 2030. It is now slated to be completed by 2040.
The development was intended to house 104,000 residential units and add SR180 billion to the Kingdom’s GDP, creating 334,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2030, the government had estimated previously.
(With Reuters)
