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
Saudi minister at Davos urges collaboration on minerals
- The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals
LONDON: Countries need to collaborate on mining and resources to help avoid geopolitical tensions, Saudi Arabia’s minister of industry and mineral resources told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday.
“The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals, the concentration in different areas of the world,” Bandar Alkhorayef told a panel discussion on the geopolitics of materials.
“The rational thing to do is to collaborate, and that’s what we are doing,” he added. “We are creating a platform of collaboration in Saudi Arabia.”
The Kingdom last week hosted the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh. Alkhorayef said the platform was launched by the government in 2022 as a contribution to the global community. “It’s very important to have a global movement, and that’s why we launched the Future Minerals Forum,” he said. “It is the most important platform of global mining leaders.”
The Kingdom has made mining one of the key pillars of its economy, rapidly expanding the sector under the Vision 2030 reform program with an eye on diversification. Saudi Arabia has an estimated $2.5 trillion in mineral wealth and the ramping up of extraction comes at a time of intense global competition for resources to drive technological development in areas like AI and renewables.
“We realized that unlocking the value that we have in our natural resources, of the different minerals that we have, will definitely help our economy to grow to diversify,” Alkhorayef said. The Kingdom has worked to reduce the timelines required to set up mines while also protecting local communities, he added. Obtaining mining permits in Saudi Arabia has been reduced to just 30 to 90 days compared to the many years required in other countries, Alkhorayef said.
“We learned very, very early that permitting is a bottleneck in the system,” he added. “We all know, and we have to be very, very frank about this, that mining doesn’t have a good reputation globally.
“We are trying to change this and cutting down the licensing process doesn’t only solve it. You need also to show the communities the impact of the mining on their lives.”
Saudi Arabia’s new mining investment laws have placed great emphasis on the development of society and local communities, along with protecting the environment and incorporating new technologies, Alkhorayef said. “We want to build the future mines; we don’t want to build old mines.”
