Barclays under investigation over claims it lent Qatar £6bn to buy its own shares and avoid a Government bailout at height of 2008 financial crisis

Alleged £6bn deal helped the bank avoid part-nationalisation suffered by Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland

Bankrolling a share purchase like this would break British financial regulations

Financial Services Authority and Serious Fraud Office investigating

Barclays has been accused of lending billions to Qatar just so the Arab state would plough it back in again to help avoid an embarrassing government bailout, it emerged today.
The deal is alleged to have been set up in 2008, at the height of the banking crisis, and is being probed by the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Services Authority.
According to reports more than £6billion was lent to Qatar Holding, part of the rich country's huge investment fund, which then bought shares in Barclays to help them avoid becoming part-nationalised like Lloyds Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
This investment was a critical show of support for Barclays when many were pulling their money out of banking shares.

More scandal: Barclays has today been accused of underwriting a Qatari share deal to ensure the bank did not go bust in 2008

The Qatari funding machine owns Harrods, David Beckham's Paris Saint-Germain and is the largest shareholder of Sainsbury's.
Barclays' alleged loan to Qatar would be underwriting their later investment, which breaches Britain's financial regulations.
At the time it would have given the impression that a new £6billion investment had been made in the bank at a critical stage, but in reality Barclays would have had to have borrowed the money to fund the loan which was then used to buy the shares.
The probe comes as the terms of the bank's fundraising at the height of the financial crisis are already being scrutinised, but allegations of a loan to the Qataris is a new strand.

Last year the authorities started looking at the fees paid for fundraising deals in 2008.
Barclays is already trying to rebuilt its reputation after it was fined a record £290million for its role in rigging the interbank interest rate known as Libor, which affects how much customers pay for mortgages and credit cards.
Setting this rate low was a bid to paint a rosier picture of the bank's financial health at the time of the financial crisis.
The rate fixing scandal led to resignation of former chief executive Bob Diamond, chairman Marcus Agius and chief operating officer Jerry del Missier.
Former Citi banker Peter Hahn, now at Cass Business School, told the Financial Times today: 'The concept of lending money to any investor to purchase your own shares raises a series of immediate questions about disclosure and other regulatory issues.'

Embarrassing: Former Barclays Bank chief executive Bob Diamond was forced to resign and the bank was fined a record £290million after it manipulated Libor

Blow: New chief executive Antony Jenkins is trying to rebuild the bank's reputation but has now been hit with a FSA and SFO probe into the alleged loan

The allegation piles yet more pressure on Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins as he pledged to help it bounce back.

Row: The Qatari investment was alleged made by the group led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al Thani (pictured), but there is no suggestion of wrongdoing on his part

The FT says Barclays received cash injections in 2008 worth a total of £6.1 billion from Qatar Holding, which is a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority, and Challenger, an investment vehicle of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar and his family.
There is no suggestion that they have carried out any wrongdoing.
Investors from Abu Dhabi and other sovereign wealth funds also pumped cash into the group as part of a capital raising to prevent the Government bailing it out - a move that helped it avoid the fate suffered by part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group.
But existing shareholders complained the terms offered to the new investors were too attractive, while the fees paid for the deal are also thought to be under investigation.
The FSA and the SFO were approached by MailOnline today but refused to comment.
A Barclays spokeswoman said: 'Both the FSA and SFO investigations are on-going and, as such, we are unable to comment further.'
Barclays said in August that Britain's fraud prosecutors had launched a criminal probe into payments between the bank and Qatar, a month after revealing the FSA's investigation into dealings between the two parties.
It said the FSA probe was into the bank and four current and former senior employees, including finance director Chris Lucas.