ShieldCrest Publishing release new book by J.R. Stephenson entitled “Barclays-Bankers or Bandits"

April 30, 2013 - PRLog -- With few exceptions banks are much larger and more powerful than their clients.  If this advantage is abused it can ruin the lives of individuals and be disastrous to business.

This abuse has been highlighted repeatedly over the last few years with banks imposing draconian penalties for customers who accidentally became one pound overdrawn against their agreed overdraft limit.  When it was eventually discovered banks had to refund millions. The more recent scandal of banks’ casino arms buying up junk bonds and sending the global economies into free-fall.  Even more recently in the city of London, the illegal and arbitrary setting of the Libor rate which sets the bank inter-lending rate. Finally, the huge bonuses paid to their executives for failure.  All of these exposed the self-serving culture of the banking industry and Barclays was in the forefront of all of these.

The author was a customer of Barclays Bank for over forty years and had his personal account and those of several of his businesses with them during this period.  The relationship at branch level was always cordial and at no time in his banking history did he or the bank ever have cause for concern.  The author seldom had to ask them for assistance and any loans he did have were relatively small and of short duration and were always repaid in full and on time. The counter staff all did their job with honesty and diligence.

Based on this experience he naturally decided to invite Barclays to assist his new company, Overseas Villa Lda, in Portugal, which was developing a resort on the Algarve.  He met with their CEO in Lisbon, and he liked the project so they agreed terms for development loans. In return the author provided them with eight million euros of approved client mortgages.

Everything was going according to plan and the relationship could not have been better. Then the bank’s CEO was recalled to the UK and the author had to remove his partner for fraud.  The loss of the CEO left a vacuum at the top of Barclays in Lisbon, which would cause things to change dramatically for the worse.

The directors of Barclays in Lisbon refused to help with the fraudulent removal of money from the account.  The company’s bank accounts were mismanaged by Barclays and confidential details divulged to their contractors. After asking their International Headquarters in London to intervene, the actions of three of their senior executives demonstrated mind-blowing levels of incompetence, cover-ups and skulduggery with little or no regard for the company, its customers or shareholders.  Furthermore, when he asked the chairman of Barclays to intervene, he helped cover it up.

This book sets out the entire story of what happened with Barclays in Portugal and at their headquarters in London whose senior management were asked to assist and it reveals what really happens at the top of Barclays. Throughout the author’s discussions, they repeatedly pointed to their reputation and trustworthiness as a means of enticement for him to sign vital documents and issued him with verbal promises which, he later learned, they had no intentions of keeping.

On one of his many visits to the top floor of Barclays’ skyscraper building at Canary Wharf, which was their international headquarters and where he frequently met their directors and senior managers, he was told they had a floor full of lawyers who loved to get involved in litigation. With this in mind and the threat of legal action when they learned he was writing this book, he has accumulated all the evidence to support the events recounted in this book and his legal team have been advised.

Despite the risks, he felt their actions needed to be made public in the hope it may prevent other of their business clients making the same mistakes and falling into the same traps.