Ex-Barclays CEO Varley Cleared of Fraud in Qatar Fundraising
Ex-Barclays CEO John Varley Cleared in Qatar Fraud Case
(Bloomberg) -- Criminal charges against former Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley relating to his conduct during the height of the 2008 financial crisis were dismissed following a ruling by a London appeals court.
The decision, which follows months of delays and appeals, puts an end to a scandal that has hung over the former executive for more than a decade. In April, Judge Robert Jay threw out two fraud charges against him, saying there was insufficient evidence against Varley, but the Court of Appeal only upheld the ruling on Friday.
The charges related to Barclays’s attempts to avoid nationalization, a fate imposed on two competitors as the financial crisis tore into balance sheets in 2008. Faced with narrowing capital reserves, Barclays executives turned to Qatar for 4 billion pounds ($5 billion) of life-saving investments -- part of more than 11 billion pounds in cash injections that year.
The U.K. Serious Fraud Office alleged that Barclays paid Qatar 322 million pounds as a sweetener to secure the investments and that there was no intention for Qatar to deliver any services in exchange, as claimed by the bank. The SFO also alleged that Varley, 63, conspired to hide the fees from other investors who participated in a cash call on worse terms.
Three other former executives at Barclays will be retried. Former Middle East head Roger Jenkins, ex-wealth boss Tom Kalaris and Richard Boath, the former European head of Barclays’s Financial Institutions division. All deny wrongdoing. If convicted, the men, all in their 60s, could face up to 10 years in jail.
The trial judge in May 2018 dismissed charges against Barclays in the case, because corporate liability laws weren’t appropriate in the case.
After seven years of investigation and hearings, having the ability to retry the three executives is an important success for the SFO after a recent run of mixed results. In the past year, it secured convictions against four senior traders on rate-rigging charges, but a major accounting fraud case was tossed out by a judge and the agency closed investigations into two major companies.
To contact the reporters on this story: Franz Wild in London at fwild@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Browning in London at jbrowning9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Marion Dakers
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