Former Barclays executives cleared after Qatar fraud trial

Three former Barclays executives were acquitted in London on Friday of charges they helped funnel 322 million pounds ($418 million) in secret fees to Qatar in return for rescue financing during the credit crisis. In a blow to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), a jury cleared Roger Jenkins, Tom Kalaris, and Richard Boath of fraud.

The men, aged between 61 and 64, all denied any wrongdoing. Qatar, a major investor in Britain and still a significant Barclays shareholder, was neither investigated nor accused of wrongdoing. The verdict draws a line under an ambitious, seven-and-a-half year investigation that led to the first criminal charges in Britain against senior financiers at a major bank over credit crisis-era conduct.

It also marks the likely end of efforts by prosecutors to hold top bankers to account for decisions taken when the global financial system was brought to its knees, forcing taxpayers into bank bailouts totalling hundreds of billions of pounds. The taxpayer-funded SFO filed the charges one month after the ruling Conservative Party pledged to abolish the investigator and prosecutor and roll it into a national crime-fighting force in 2017.

But it has been beset by setbacks. The most senior defendant, former CEO John Varley, was acquitted last June and the SFO case against Barclays itself, which also centred on alleged unlawful financial assistance to Qatar through a $3 billion loan in 2008, was dismissed in 2018. ($1 = 0.7696 pounds)

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