Master.DKP wrote:The beautiful refugee from Bosnia who clinched the £7.3bn deal that saved Barclays
By LAURA COLLINS and ELIZABETH SANDERSON
Last updated at 8:03 AM on 05th July 2009
In glittering diamonds worth millions, white fur and a dress that showed off her enviable figure to its best, it was little wonder that she turned heads as she arrived at the high society party in London.
This is Diana Jenkins, 36-year-old wife of multi-millionaire Barclays Bank executive Roger and a woman who seems born to be in the spotlight.
Her Scottish husband is more retiring. ‘I don’t want to be out and about. I guard my privacy,’ the 52-year-old says.
Perhaps that’s why he credited his wife with charming the Qatari royal family into parting with £7.3billion last December.
Glamourous: Diana Jenkins escaped the terrors of the Sarajevo siege to find love and wealth in Britain
The Middle East investment deal rescued his employer Barclays at the height of the credit crunch.
Certainly it was a deal that thrust them both – he reluctantly, she exuberantly – into the public eye. But it is Diana who has stayed there.
In recent months, she has emerged not only as an enthusiastic party-giver and goer but as a social networker with a startling ability to persuade the great and the good to part with their money for a good cause.
She masterminded a party at the couple’s £30million home in Berkeley Square, Mayfair.
With a guest list including George Clooney, Matt Damon, Sir Michael Caine, Bono, Scarlett Johansson and the Duchess of York, the event helped raise £10million for Darfur’s refugees.
She persuaded Justin Timberlake to sing two weeks ago at Sir Elton John’s annual summer party for his AIDS charity, held at his £30million Windsor home.
Diana sponsored the event.
True, she may have lost a little dignity when pictured days earlier taking a tumble out of Guy Ritchie’s Mayfair pub, The Punchbowl, with Timberlake, having discussed his contribution to the party until the small hours. But her dazzling social prowess remained intact.
Yet despite an impressive list of famous contacts and a flurry of paparazzi shots, little is known about the glamorous woman who has burst on to the social scene in a dizzying blend of charity and celebrity.
And Diana has never given her own account – until now.
A-list philanthropist: Multi-millionaire Barclays banker Roger Jenkins
Today, she describes her remarkable journey from Bosnia to Barclays. She tells of her love for the husband who was, she admits, her first ‘real friend’ in this country.
And she reveals the heartbreak that lies behind her philanthropy.
She says: ‘I grew up in Bosnia in a very loving family. My mum and dad were amazing and I was very close to my younger brother, Irnis.
'It was a very happy childhood and then the war came and everything that came after it was a shock. Everything that happened in my life after that was really a reaction to that. I was just trying to survive.’
She was born Sanela Dijana Catic to middle-class Muslim parents in Alipasin Poye, a grim concrete complex of communist-style blocks four miles south of Sarajevo.
Her father was an economist with a publishing firm called Svjetlost.
She graduated from the University of Sarajevo with a degree in economics and social engineering.
The future should have been bright.
Then war with Serbia tore the country apart. For four years, Sarajevo, once part of Yugoslavia, endured the longest military siege in modern history.
Fifteen thousand residents died – at least 1,500 were children. Diana recalls: ‘We had no food and no electricity.
My dad and my brother couldn’t get out and my mother wouldn’t leave without them. My dad was begging me to run for my life because I was a girl.
‘War was raging and I was escaping through barricades, walking, buses, whatever I could find. I made it to Croatia and once I was there there were Bosnian refugees everywhere.
‘I was living off charity, off any help I could get. Every day it seemed I would hear my friend had died, my uncle was dead, my first cousin was dead. I would just hear of people dying all the time.
‘Then I lost contact with my parents. I was dead inside.’
Diana, who speaks rapidly in accented English, pauses at the memory of that frightening and isolating time.
She continues: ‘In 1993, I headed to London. I didn’t know anybody,
'I couldn’t speak English, I had no money. I reported myself to the Home Office and they gave me a piece of paper and I tried to figure out what to do.
‘I was in Brixton but I went round looking for jobs everywhere. I was cleaning, I was selling jewellery, I was a sales assistant, I was working in restaurants.
'I did anything really just to survive and to work. I had a degree in Sarajevo but that was useless in London so I had to start all over again. But I was optimistic. I wanted to work hard. I wanted to get my parents and my brother out.’
However difficult that period, she was determined to make something of her life and bring her family to London.
‘I went to night school for classes in English and then I went to computer school. I applied for a scholarship to City University but I was turned down.
'I did pass the acceptance test so I had to work while I put myself through
university.
'At City I studied computer science and got an honours degree.’
The end of Sanela and the beginning of Diana
But her dreams of rescuing her family were not to be – not entirely, at any rate.
Quietly, Diana says: ‘In 1995, I found out that my brother was dead. That was the end of me. That’s when I changed my name to Diana because I wanted not to exist any more. Because it was unbearable.’
Irnis was killed eight days before the end of the war and just short of his 21st birthday.
His sister says: ‘To this day, I’ve never been in therapy about it.
'I have figured out my own way.’
That way of coping is ‘to keep going. To help people that need your help. To look at the bright side’.
It took a long time for Diana to feel able to do that or, she admits, to return to her homeland.
‘Really,’ she reflects, ‘I was at a point in my life where I needed stability. I needed somebody who would understand.’
It was then that she met Roger Jenkins at the Barbican gym in the City.
An appropriate meeting place perhaps for a man who, in his youth, was an international sprinter.
His brother David represented Scotland and won a silver medal at the Munich Olympics in 1972 but left the sport in disgrace when his role in a steroid-muggling ring earned him a prison sentence.
Sporting youth: Roger, left, and brother David were sprinters. David won silver at the 1972 Olympics
When Diana met Roger Jenkins, he was living alone in a rented apartment.
He had separated from his wife, Catherine McDowell, a fellow Barclays banker whom he met when they were trainees in 1978.
Diana jokes: ‘It was perhaps more instant attraction for him than me. He’s a very, very nice man. What people don’t understand, I think, is that Roger really was, you could say, nobody when we met.
'He was not this very wealthy man. He was my first friend in England really.’
The couple married in 1999 and on the rare occasions Jenkins comments on his now considerable fortune he credits Diana with having helped to smooth his path to a number of lucrative deals.
She, he claims, possesses the social skills he lacks. It was her cultivation of a relationship with the wife of Sheik Hamad Al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, that helped to secure the £7.3billion Middle Eastern investment to the 300-year-old bank.
‘She’s my consigliere and counsellor,’ he once said. ‘And she knows a lot of people.’
Today, her husband spends his time in private jets working on complex corporate tax deals for Barclays.
He operates in an area of banking known in the City as tax arbitrage and has acquired the nickname Roger ‘the Dodger’ for his mastery of a practice called ‘double dipping’, which exploits the differences between the world’s tax systems to minimise the exposure of corporations and wealthy individuals to HM Revenue and Customs.
He is the highest-paid employee of a FTSE 100 company ever, earning an estimated £75million in 2005 alone.
According to Diana: ‘Roger is very quiet. He’s very stable and very supportive. I sometimes have to force him to open the door to new opportunities. He’s not about instinct, whereas I do my things almost in a cowboy, wild way. We’re opposites. But they attract don’t they?’
It is a formula which seems to work even if their lives are often spent in different countries.
International philanthropist and mother-of-two
After ten years of marriage and two children – Innis, eight, and Eneya, five – Diana spends much of the year with the children at a £5million mansion in Malibu, while Roger jets around the world brokering deals or at their Mayfair home.
And while he insists they are ‘very down to earth people’, those who know Diana well say she enjoys the social scene in California every bit as much as she does in London.
Diana says: ‘I love London, I love California, I love Sarajevo...all for different reasons. I like to move around as much as I can.’
In America, Diana has made something of a name for herself for roping Hollywood A-listers into her philanthropic projects.
In 2006, she and Deborah Anderson, the British-born photographer daughter of Jon Anderson – singer with Seventies band Yes – collaborated on a glossy celebrity photographic book, Room 23.
Diana charmed a host of stars such as Donald Sutherland, Cindy Crawford, George Clooney and the singer Kid Rock to have their pictures taken in the Peninsula Hotel, Beverly Hills, for the book, in aid of charity.
But while it is the star-studded work which has brought Diana her current profile – one with which she says she is not entirely comfortable – the roots of her philanthropy lie in Bosnia and in a foundation she set up without great fanfare or publicity.
She says: ‘If I’d had $5,000 to send to somebody in 1995 to get my brother out, he would still be alive.
'You realise when you have money, if you try to work hard that means you can help people – your parents, your kids. My kids will never be where I was.’
Diana adds: ‘I brought my parents to live with me in 1997. They were devastated after the war. And really I started my family early because I knew that when I had a baby it would give them a desire for life. Then, when I gave birth to my daughter, I nearly lost her because she needed emergency intervention.
'That same time, eight babies in Sarajevo died. My daughter is healthy and wonderful but if the same thing had happened in Sarajevo she would probably have died.‘
Childhood home: The grim communist-style blocks in a Sarajevo suburb where Diana was born and raised
She lived because I could afford hospital and doctors. That’s when I realised that apart from myself and my family, I had to do something else. I had to go back to Bosnia.
‘It was painful. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that country at the time. I felt it had cost me everything. But that’s how it all started.’
With two of her brother’s friends, twins Adnan and Admin Pasic, 36, Diana established the Irnis Catic Foundation.
She quietly donated machines and incubators for all the babies at the University of Sarajevo Medical Centre.
Her donation of €280,000 (£240,000 now) was the single biggest personal donation it has ever received.
She and Jenkins donated £3million to the UCLA School of Law to create a clinic on international justice aimed at helping courts trying Balkan war criminals, while Diana is an honorary adviser to the Bosnian president Dr Haris Silajdzic.
Dr Silajdzic says: ‘She is a remarkable woman. The clinic’s work is part of the healing process of our country. The work they do is crucial. We don’t want to dwell on what happened but we must consider the past in order to create a normal future. That is why the work she does is so important.’
Diana says: ‘Bosnia has still not recovered and I have to help in any way I can. We must not forget it. I have to remember it but also to move on.
‘The reason you see this image of me is because I wanted to be that girl. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want people to look at me like I’m just some poor Bosnian refugee.
‘We are very different, Roger and me. I live every day like it’s the last. I want to see the world and do everything I can. Every night I go to bed and think, “What have I achieved?”
‘Roger is very stable and supportive and kind. I make life entertaining for him, I guess.’
Additional reporting by Angella Johnson
I sta je sad uspjeh?
Udati se za milione? Malo dijeliti inkubatore po seheru, a ovamo, UCLA bubnuti 3 miliona donacije da im se nadje "za zajebanciju", pa uzivati zivot u Caliju jer se ima love, malo trckarati za Kid Rockom da ga uslikas u knjigu od koje ce profit ici za djecu u Mozambiku.
Najvise volim ove nase "Dijane" koje se udaju za po 15 godina starije, taman u trenutku razvoda miliunasa, sretnu se negdje po teretanama, trgovinama, benzinskim crpkama. Njoj 24-26, njemu vec 40 kvrga.
I tu pocinje prica kako bez tog covjeka si bio niko i nista, a sa njim sad si uspjesan, jer para na paru, a us na fukaru.
Hvala joj za inkubatore, ali ima nas jos koji se nisu mogli prodati i jebavati po 20 godina od sebe starije, jer je bilo malo previse tesko ustajati ranom zorom a vracati se kad je mrklo, u dalekom svijetu gdje nigdje nikog svog (od familije) nemas pa je najbolje prihvatiti korupciju iznutra, promjeniti ime, i reci - da sam imala 5,000 nebi mi niko iz familije bio mrtav. S tim kompleksom se i je doslo do miliona, ali meni je drazi svaki onaj kojeg nisu mogli kupiti, nisu mu mogli ime promjeniti i u kojem jos uvijek zivi Balkan jer da je bila Engleskinja nebi je nikad ni pogledao, ovako unesrecana, Balkanska zena, koja nije imala kad i nije imala nista od zivota, sa svojom pricom normalno da je egzotika narucito nekom ko dijeli pare ukolo iz miloste, mozda se je i ozenio iz miloste ili sto ga nece moci cusnuti i uzeti pola ili vise nego sto vrijedi. Ne rece nam Dijana samo kakvi su joj bili pre-nuptial kontrakti, tj. ako se razvede moci ce ponjeti bunde, prstenje i slike sa sobom, a od ostalog, vjerovatno, Nurko de kurko.
Najvise u zivotu mrzim korpuciju, a od korpucija najvise mrzim onu u zeni, zbog para i love. Za mene svaka takva moze biti nevjerovatno sposobna, nadasve inteligentna, zgodna, nezgodna, ali ima svoju cijenu, i drugo, koruptirana je iznutra, tj. pokvarena. Jednom kad si iznutra kvaran, kad klijas, tome zubu plombe nema, toj bolesti ljeka nema. Jos pri tome, od toga koliko ne zeli nista sa Bosnom da ima, nadje se da bude savjetnica Harisu Silajdzicu, koji je specijalizirao za gospodje ministarke, pokundirene tikve i ostale snajke "Sanela" Dijana (asocijacija na Dijanu koja glavu izgubi u kurvanjlucima s kojekakvim Arapskim playbojima) Barbara Jennifer profila.
Ja jos jednom mogu da kazem - svakom nasem baustelcu i fabrickom radniku koji ustaje u 4 ujutro, to su ljudi koji su za mene uspjeli, uspjeli da zive teskim zivotom, da opstanu, da ne pobjegnu, da se ne skrase za kakav brzi posao, podzmelje, nadzemlje, teror u familiji i da djecu podignu, s nadom da ce biti sposobniji osim za prodaje za pare, konsumpcije narkotika ili glumom kojekakvih gangstercica i opasnih podzemnih lovatora. Drugi koji su uspjeli - uspjeli su profesionalno, i samostalno ali laze onaj koji kaze da se to cijeni, to se cijeni samo ako se je konvertiralo u tvrdu valuticu, u kesic, u dobar zivot, u sakoice, skupe autice, odmore na Sejselima. Za sve one koji su se udali za pare, iz fukare u svilu i kadifu, niti su za mene uspjeli oni - kao oni licno, niti su u procesu dokazali da su jaki, tj. pobjegli su - iz zivota emigranta u zivot "privilegovanih", ali treba i s Rogerom kojeg opisuje kao da se radi o mramoru kamenu, a ne o insanu, zivsti. Ali - sve se moze za pare, samo da se ne ustaje izjutra, i dok blicevi flickaju, Sanela Dijana, s sivo ruznog komunistickog Alipasina koje me nikad nije pogodilo toliko svojim sviliom niti ruznilom, dok me Harisova savjetnica, istog onog koji je vlado dok su joj burazera koknuli, nije osvjestila, i ona i njena diploma sa Sarajevskog univerziteta u socijalnom inzinjeringu za koju nisam ni znao da postoji kao pravac, ali - sta moze podnjeti hartija i gomile udavaca koje na kraju morase spustiti cijenu na trzistu, pa se sad dive onima koje se prodadose iznad cijene po 20.000 puta, to nemres bilivit.
Jedini razlog zbog kojeg napisan ovaj post, je da onima koji ce da citaju pricu o Saneli i da je smatraju uspjelom, da napisem malo i o drugoj strani kovanice, i kako je lako dijeliti tudje novce, ne rece nam Sanela sta je kome dala dok nije imala nista, a tad se je racunalo, i ne rece nam koliko je ona vode i hrane radnicima nosila dok su zidali Rogeru kucu od 30 miliona quids-a, da bi teturajuci pjana izlazila sad iz kafana, izgleda da krug i na dnu i na vrhu, slicno se zaokruzi jerbo uspjeti toliko da ne znas sta ces vise od sebe, i nije mi uspjeti vec propasti.
,....Doktor bilo cega,al' DOKTOR,..Svaka cast 
...I to jos HEMIJE 
