Barclays plc is a major British banking group headquartered in London, with a history extending over several centuries and substantial retail, corporate and investment-banking operations in the United Kingdom and internationally.
The criminal sanctions case
According to the US Department of Justice, Barclays deliberately altered or stripped identifying information from payment messages specifically so that US financial institutions would not recognise that sanctioned parties or jurisdictions were involved - not a passive control failure, but an active concealment.
The penalty
Barclays agreed to forfeit US$298 million. The resolution package included criminal charges, an acknowledgement of responsibility, a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, and ongoing compliance obligations overseen by both US and UK regulators.
A second, more recent penalty
The pattern was not a one-off from a decade ago. In July 2025, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority imposed a further roughly £42 million in combined penalties on Barclays for separate financial-crime risk-management failures - on top of an earlier £72 million FCA fine in 2015 for related deficiencies. Worth stating precisely: the FCA's 2025 findings concerned Barclays' failures to manage financial-crime risk, not a finding that Barclays itself participated in the underlying laundering - two directors of the associated business, Fowler Oldfield, were convicted of laundering, while a third individual connected to the case was acquitted.
Still operating
Across a criminal sanctions case, a near-$300 million forfeiture, and two separate FCA penalties spanning a decade, Barclays remained open and continued operating throughout - a long-established British bank operating within the very same UK regulatory environment that closed BCCI.
The comparison with BCCI
Barclays matters precisely because it is British, regulated by the same authorities, and has faced repeat, serious financial-crime findings stretching back more than a decade - deliberate sanctions evasion, then two further rounds of financial-crime control failures. None of that history has ever been treated as reason to question whether Barclays itself should exist. BCCI's history was.
Also read:
- Barclays Bank PLC Agrees to Forfeit $298 Million in Connection with Violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act
- Barclays Bank PLC forfeits $298 million for violations of U.S. economic sanctions; U.S. judge questions use of DPA, lack of individuals prosecuted
