Given the rough ride that Barclays Bank has had in the past month over CEO Jes Staley’s fines and public smackdown for trying to out a whistleblower, the bank may have relished some good news this week when a U.K. court threw out criminal charges relating to its decade-old fundraising deals in Qatar.
On 21 May a U.K. Crown Court dismissed charges of unlawful financial assistance and fraud against Barclays Bank and its parent company, Barclays PLC, over the nature of the bank’s deals with a group of Qatari investors to bail it out of trouble and keep it out of U.K. government control at the height of the financial crisis.
