BCS Barclays PLC

By Max Colchester 

A U.K. judge on Friday ordered Barclays PLC to hand over emails detailing its 2008 emergency capital raising to PCP Capital Partners, a private-equity group suing the bank alleging it made "sham payments" to encourage Middle Eastern investors to pump billions of dollars into the lender at the height of the financial crisis.

The judge ordered Barclays to pass on a trove of documents, including emails from former senior bankers, which may help shine a light on how the U.K. bank wooed Qatari investors to join a GBP7.3 billion capital raise as the bank wobbled amid a financial market meltdown.

PCP Capital, run by Amanda Staveley a financier with deep connections in the Gulf, helped put together a GBP3.5 billion chunk of the capital injection into Barclays by Abu Dhabi investors. PCP is suing Barclays for GBP721 million alleging the bank gave Qatari investors a more favorable deal than Abu Dhabi by handing them "sham payments." PCP also alleges that Barclays lent Qatar investors $3 billion to invest back into the bank. A Barclays spokesman declined to comment on the ruling . the bank has said the claim is without merit and will defend it in court.

Barclays has said it paid GBP322 million in "advisory services" to Qatari investors, which weren't initially disclosed after the capital raise. The U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority imposed a GBP50 million fine over the disclosure failures. Barclays is contesting the fine. The Serious Fraud Office is probing the payments and expected to decide whether to file criminal charges by the end of March.

PCP wanted access to emails detailing the transactions from Richard Boath, a banker who used to work at Barclays until he was dismissed earlier this year. A spokesman for Mr. Boath declined to comment.

Barclays had sought to delay the disclosure of these documents for several months. On Friday, a British judge ruled that the emails, which are "of particular significance," be handed over to PCP by Monday afternoon. The emails include correspondence from a private email account belonging to a senior banker working with clients in the Middle East, who played a key role in the capital raise.

A trial is due to start in January of next year.

Write to Max Colchester at max.colchester@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 03, 2017 13:41 ET (18:41 GMT)

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