Former Barclays banker ‘misled regulators’

A former senior executive at Barclaysgave “false and misleading” answers twice to regulators over the bank’s secret payment of £332 million in sweeteners to Qatar in the depths of the financial crisis.

Tom Kalaris, a former chief executive of the bank’s wealth division, has been banned from holding a senior position in UK financial services after losing an appeal at the upper tribunal.

The ruling comes four years after Kalaris and two senior colleagues at Barclays were acquitted of fraud charges in connection with the undisclosed payments.

The tribunal found that one of Kalaris’s answers in an interview with the Financial Conduct Authority in 2013 was “dishonest” while answers he gave to FCA officials the following year were “false and misleading”.

Kalaris was therefore “not fit and proper to perform the chief executive and executive director functions” for Saranac Partners, a wealth management firm he co-founded after leaving Barclays in June 2013.

The FCA initially found against Kalaris in 2022 and in evidence published on Tuesday it described how he had told a Barclays colleague, when discussing the payment: “None of us wants to go to jail here …the food sucks and the sex is worse.”

The tribunal finding was made on the balance of probabilities whereas the criminal trial required proof beyond reasonable doubt to justify a conviction.

The FCA blocked Kalaris’s application to run Saranac in 2022 and he challenged that veto at the tribunal, whose findings were released on Tuesday.

The finding throws fresh light on the conduct of Barclays in 2008 when it made undisclosed payments to Qatar in order to get two massive rescue capital-raisings worth £11.8 billion over the line to avoid a UK government bailout.

Laura Dawes, director of authorisations at the FCA, said: “We welcome the tribunal’s ruling. It unanimously found that Mr Kalaris was dishonest in two enforcement interviews the FCA conducted into events that occurred during his time at Barclays.

“He is therefore not fit to be a senior manager in a business regulated by us. It is vital financial firms are led by those who are honest, transparent and who act with integrity.”

Kalaris and two former Barclays bankers, Richard Boath and Roger Jenkins, were cleared in February 2020 after a five-month trial at the Old Bailey. The Serious Fraud Office had alleged that lucrative terms given to Qatar were hidden from the market and other investors through bogus advisory service agreements.

A lawyer for Kalaris at the tribunal’s evidence session last month said: “He has had over 40 years of extremely high-level experience in financial services and nothing in all of those 40 years is said to give rise to any concern.”

Kalaris, 68, who still works for Saranac, declined to comment personally on Tuesday.

Saranac said: “We are disappointed by the findings of the upper tribunal but accept its decision. The matters at issue pre-date the establishment of Saranac Partners and are completely unrelated to the firm and its work. The tribunal made no criticism of Saranac Partners nor its activities.”

Barclays declined to comment. It is separately challenging a fine of £50 million from the FCA in 2022 over its conduct in the Qatari fundraising.

Saranac, based in the St James’s district of London, manages £5 billion of assets for institutional and private clients and boasts heavyweight board members including Martin Gilbert, the former Aberdeen Asset Management boss, and Jerry del Missier, one of Kalaris’s former colleagues at Barclays.

Del Missier, a lieutenant of Bob Diamond, resigned in the wake of the Libor interest rate rigging scandal.