(Bloomberg) -- A former Barclays Plc official told investigators that he thought secret payments made to get Qatar to bail out the bank at the height of the 2008 financial crisis would have made other investors go "completely nuts."

Richard Boath, who was a senior official executing a plan to raise more capital for Barclays in June 2008, opposed the side-deal because he didn’t think it was right to pay one set of investors more than others, he told investigators from the U.K. Serious Fraud Office in 2014.

The 322 million pounds ($426 million) in fees ensured that Qatar would make an investment of 4 billion pounds -- which allowed Barclays to avoid nationalization. The payment is now the subject of a historic fraud trial against Boath, former Chief Executive Office John Varley, ex-Middle East head Roger Jenkins, and then-wealth boss Tom Kalaris.

Someone on Boath’s team came up with the idea of channeling extra payments to Qatar via an advisory agreement to meet its demands to be paid more than double the standard 1.5 percent investment commission, Boath said. But when Jenkins wanted to moved ahead with it, Boath said he objected.

"I said, ‘Hang on, Roger,’” Boath told SFO investigators on a tape that prosecutors played to a London jury Monday. “We can’t do a transaction in which we give one set of fees to the market or to one set of economics for one group of investors and we have a different set of economics for another set of invests, because if they found out they’ll go completely nuts. You can’t do that. We can’t do that.’ I was quite vigorous, because I felt it quite strongly."

The SFO alleges that the defendants -- all four of whom deny wrongdoing -- lied to investors when they failed to disclose the Qatari fees. The trial is the first of any top bankers in the U.K. for alleged wrong-doing connected to the financial crisis.

When Boath raised his objection, Jenkins agreed that it wasn’t worth the risk, Boath told the SFO.

“‘Well f--k that,’" Jenkins replied, according to Boath’s interview with the investigators. Boath said neither of them felt it was worth doing the deal just to protect Varley and ex-investment bank head Bob Diamond, who may have lost their jobs if the bank was nationalized.

“I’m not taking a hit to save John and Bob’s job,” Boath recalled Jenkins saying. “F--k that.”

Diamond isn’t accused of wrongdoing.

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