The 87-year-old was ordered to return to court in two weeks for sentencing. He can be jailed or fined. But a high court judge also ruled that the businessman’s wife of 34 years, Hiroko Barclay, had failed to prove she was in contempt of court for not paying her a £100m divorce settlement. Lady Barclay argued that Barclay had breached a judge’s order to pay her the money and had the means to pay but did not, and asked the judge to give him a prison sentence. But Sir Jonathan Cohen found he had not proved to the criminal standard that Barclay had enough funds to pay the sum, which was due in two installments by April. In his ruling, he said: “My finding is in no way diminished [the husband’s] Responsibility.” The court heard evidence in a three-day hearing in which it was suggested that Barclay’s nephews, Aidan, Howard and Alistair Barclay, had “blocked” his attempts to access his funds. In his summation, Charles Howard QC explained why a source of funding for Barclay was cut off. “Obviously this all coincided with the war between the two sides of the family and that was the reason for the drying up.” In his judgment, Cohen strongly criticized the nephews, who run the Telegraph and who made several submissions to prevent the media from reporting what they described as their confidential and private information. “It is shocking that instead of helping to find a solution to what should be a matter of honor for this family, they are refusing to provide information, hiding behind the walls of the trust structure, while spending over £1m on the grant [Barclay’s] legal fees and no doubt a very large sum for their own fees to try to avert the media gaze.’ At the heart of the case are the highly complex financial arrangements governing the Barclay family empire, as well as the rivalry between Frederick Barclay and his twin brother, David, and his sons. Cohen said the two brothers reorganized their vast fortune, estimated to be worth £6 billion by the Sunday Times earlier this year, in order to “remove tax liabilities that arise in life or death. [which] took the form of a web of highly complex offshore arrangements.’ The court heard how Frederick Barclay had given half of his 50% stake in the business to his brother’s sons, in what his wife told the court she had described as “the biggest mistake of his life”. In his ruling, Cohen said Barclay felt “overwhelmed by pressure from his brother” to change succession plans: “The possibility of the nephews getting together and ousting Amanda [Barclay’s daughter] it should have been obvious.” Bitter tensions erupted into the open in January 2020, when Barkley sued his nephews for eavesdropping on thousands of his private conversations at the Ritz Hotel. The court heard that Barclay has only one asset in his name – a half share of Brecqhou Island which was branded “worthless” in court due to the complex ownership structure – and only one bank account. His wealth was placed in a series of offshore trusts. Between 2014 and 2019, Barclay had access to £128m of that to spend, the court heard. However, in September 2019 “the nephews turned off the tap” of the funds to their uncle, the judge said. Hiroko Barclay claimed that this was a “scam” designed by her ex-husband to ensure she would not receive any money after filing for divorce in March 2019, but Cohen found no evidence of this. The court heard that Aidan Barclay, by far the biggest shareholder of the four children, had told her he had “no love” for his uncle or Amanda because of the expensive legal proceedings Frederick Barclay took his nephews to court, having found that private conversations at the Ritz Hotel had been hacked. Cohen described Hiroko Barclay’s suspicions as “understandable” given Barclay’s insistence on “minimizing taxes and maintaining self-control.” Only for a short time during their marriage did his wife own an asset in her name, a house. Hiroko Barclay told the court she feared her husband just wanted to see the legal process through until “one or the other of us” died. Barclay must pay the £245,000 by August 11 to avoid a possible jail sentence of up to six weeks. His ex-wife’s legal fees now stand at £900,000, with her legal team agreeing to work for nothing for this week’s hearing. Barclay’s nephews have paid his legal fees, through a loan, and paid for their own team, which included two lawyers and Heather Rogers QC, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. This story, including the headline, was amended on 28 July 2022 to clarify that Frederick Barclay could face jail for one of the judgments – the one relating to £245,000 in maintenance costs and legal fees – but not the judgment in relation to with the £100m divorce settlement.
