The former chairman of Barclays, Marcus Agius, has told a London court that he was not aware of documents related to £280 million worth of payments made by the bank to a Qatari sovereign wealth fund which are at the centre of a high-profile court case involving four former Barclays executives.
Agius was being questioned by prosecutors for the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) about his knowledge of a document which outlined the payment terms of an advisory services agreement (ASA) struck with Qatar Holding.
The SFO is alleging that the four executives on trial, including former chief executive John Varley, lied to the stock market and the bank’s investors about how more than £320 million in fees were paid to Qatar in return for emergency funding at the height of the 2008 financial crisis in order to avoid taking a government bailout.
“Not only did I not see this document, I was not aware of its existence,” said Agius. He added that he was not aware of how the size of the fees was negotiated or the final figure was arrived at.
The SFO maintains that the ASAs were devised in order to disguise the fact that Qatar had asked for higher commissions than other underwriters involved in the fundraising. Agius testified that such a scenario where there are fees for one set of underwriters but not another would be “an exceptional move…completely contrary to market practice [and] undermine the whole project”.
After the former chairman’s testimony, the jury was also read an email sent in January 2010 from the bank’s financial controller, Peter Estlin, to another member of the bank’s finance department relaying questions from auditors PwC about the ASAs.
According to Estlin, PwC wanted to “understand that there is real activity supporting the payments, even if they expensive” and “understand the meeting, introductions etc that they assisted with”.
The case, which is expected to last for at least six months, continues.
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