Tag Archives: Sean Fitzpatrick

This morning/afternoon.

Greystones, county Wicklow.

Mourners arrive at the Holy Rosary Church for the funeral of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick. From top: former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm (left); former INM Chairman Leslie Buckley and Denis O’Brien.

Earlier: In Memoriam

Sam Boal/RollingNews

Saturday’s Irish Times

In reference to your obituary column in Saturday’s Irish Times: poster-boy banker with semi-detached relationship with ethics, as you state, receives four written columns.

While a life devoted to serving the Irish people with personal courage receives two written columns.

Tom Meaghar,
Athlone

Meanwhile..

Sadly we don’t need Global Trends 2021 to tell us what we have become. Your obituaries page on the same day does the job with chilling efficiency.

Lavishly illustrated with a roguish photograph, exuding his “clubbable (whatever that means?) relaxed, warm bonhomie”, Seánie Fitzpatrick, disgraced banker and wrecker of homes, businesses and lives, dominates three quarters of a page. Pushed into the margins is the “significant political impact both sides of the Border” figure of courageous and diligent Austin Currie.

Lunatics and asylums come to mind, anyone?

Kieran Fagen,
Killiney.

Irish Times Letters

Seán Fitzpatrick

This afternoon.

A decade after the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank and 12 years after he temporarily transferred loans valued at up to €122m without disclosing this fact to the board and the bank’s auditors…

Seán FitzPatrick has been expelled from Chartered Accountants Ireland after a disciplinary tribunal found he had brought discredit on himself and his profession.

They don’t mess around.

Justice at last.

Let this be a warning to others.

Seán FitzPatrick expelled from Chartered Accountants Ireland (RTÉ)

Rollingnews

Former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Sean Fitzpatrick

Go about your business.

Simon Carswell, in The Irish Times, reports:

The full reasons why the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick collapsed may never be made public after a State watchdog decided to withhold a lengthy report on the case.

Director of Corporate Enforcement Ian Drennan has withdrawn his offer to provide a 415-page report on the case to an Oireachtas committee because it could not give him guarantees he wanted to legally protect him and his office from “litigation risk and associated financial exposure”

Good times.

Full report on Anglo trial collapse may never be made public (Simon Carswell, The Irish Times)

Pic: Rollingnews

From top: Former Anglo Irish Bank boss Seán FitzPatrick and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphries

No.

And don’t call her Shirley.

In May of last year, the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil that the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) would provide a full report into the collapse of the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chief Seán FitzPatrick.

Mr FitzPatrick was acquitted of furnishing false information to Anglo’s auditors last year.

It followed solicitor with the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) Kevin O’Connell admitting that he had destroyed documents relevant to the criminal proceedings against Mr FitzPatrick, among other matters.

On Sunday, Stephen O’Brien, in The Sunday Times, reported that the ODCE’s 235-page report on the failed trial, replete with 3,000 pages of appendices, will not be published.

[It was delivered to the then Minister for Enterprise Frances Fitzgerald in June 2017]

Mr O’Brien reported:

The ODCE report includes correspondence with third parties, internal emails, and draft witness statements.

A source familiar with the document said: “It provides a detailed and fact-based narrative of the various factors that contributed to the trial judge directing the jury to acquit the accused. Under no circumstances could it be considered a whitewash.”

Further to this…

The Business and Enterprise Minister Heather Humphreys was interviewed by Áine Lawlor on RTÉ’s News at One this afternoon about the refusal to publish the full report and the decision to, instead, publish a 30-page summary-like document about the shortcomings.

The following exchange came after Ms Humphreys – who said she intends to turn the ODCE into an independent statutory agency and said the ODCE has since received more money and staff – insisted the ODCE is doing a “lot of good work”.

Áine Lawlor: “We have heard all these promises about transparency and accountability and resources and all the rest before. The track record, as you’ve referred to yourself, is patchy to say the least.

“Now, the Cabinet, the Government has, according to media reports, a 235-page report from the ODCE, with 3,000 pages of appendices, going through all the previous failings. Now given that Anglo Irish and IBRC, between them cost the Irish State and taxpayer nearly €35billion and that debt is still there in the national debt – why should the public not have the fullest account?

“Why are we only getting this 30 pages that you’ve published today?”

Surely we deserve full transparency here?”

Heather Humphreys: “Yeah, well I just want to say that I’d like to be able to publish this report but I can’t. Because of legal advice, I would be contravening the Companies Act, if I did so – that’s why I have, today, published an account of the shortcomings identified by Judge Aylmer…I just want to make sure that what happened in the past, and it is historic now, will not happen again.”

Lawlor: “Well, saying it’s historic is all, the point about all of these things is whether we’re learning from the historic mistakes or whether we’re doomed to repeat them. How do we know that you are actually, minister, in the measures you’re taking, doing what’s needed – when we don’t have the fullest view of what went wrong in the past?”

Humphreys: “Well, what I’m saying is, is that, you know, it’s not legally possible for the minister to publish the report under Section 955 of the Companies Act and that’s why I’m publishing an account of the shortcomings…”

Listen back in full here

Related: ODCE report on Sean FitzPatrick trial collapse to stay confidential (Stephen O’Brien, The Sunday Times)

Cabinet approves proposed changes to ODCE (RTÉ)

Previously: ‘The Minister Has Asked The ODCE For A Full Report’

Rollingnews

 

This afternoon.

In the Dáil.

TDs made statements on the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, received by Fine Gael’s Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell O’Connor.

It followed the acquittal of former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Sean Fitzpatrick earlier this week, after lead investigator from the ODCE shredded documents which were relevant to the investigation.

Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty said:

“The first thing I think we need to say, in relation to this debate, is that Ireland doesn’t do prosecution of white collar crime and it’s not just this collapse of this trial or the acquittal of Seanie Fitzpatrick, but it’s, for decades now, we’ve seen that thread.

“We’ve seen the underfunding of resources, of agencies that are supposed to be tackling white collar crime, we see staff resources being cut and we see our legislative framework, that should underpin a strong, robust anti-corruption and white collar crime agenda, simply not there.

“My colleague spoke about the request, when the ODCE was established in 2001, and it was established as a result of the tribunals of investigation, the massive corruption that we’ve seen in those tribunals, tribunals that span three decades, yet only one conviction because of corruption.

“Despite the fact that we know that politicians were up to their neck in it, in relation to brown envelopes. Despite the fact that we know that people had benefitted, in terms of their own lifestyle as a result of backhanders given to people in influential places but CAB didn’t go in and seize the assets at that time, because there’s one rule for certain individuals and another rule for others.

“But when it was established in 2001, within a number of years, the director was requesting resources. The director wrote to Micheál Martin, who was the line minister at that time in 2005, and continued to write to him over a period of time, telling him that the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement was wholly inadequately resourced.

“Minister Martin at the time refused the request and at a time when tens of thousands of additional public sector workers were bing recruited, not an additional staff member was given to the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement.

“Bertie Ahern, sitting for years where you’re sitting today, and said that they needed to wait their turn. And, at the same time, at the same time, Seanie Fitzpatrick and his ilk were setting in train the economic disaster that people the length and breath of this country had to endure over the last ten years. And that is a symbol of how this country deals with white collar crime.Continue reading →

Taoiseach Enda Kenny

Earlier today.

During Leaders’ Questions.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was asked about former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Seán Fitzpatrick being acquitted of furnishing false information to Anglo’s auditors.

The acquittal followed solicitor with the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) Kevin O’Connell admitting that he had destroyed documents relevant to the criminal proceedings against Mr FitzPatrick, among other matters.

During Leaders’ Questions, Mr Kenny said:

“The ODCE is a statutory independent body. Its mother Department, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, has no responsibility or power of enforcement. The ODCE takes its own legal advice. There were gardaí attached to the ODCE in the beginning but they were not involved in the way this case was taken. The judge did point out that the most fundamental error was the way in which they went about taking evidence from the auditors of Anglo Irish Bank, who were both from the firm of accountants involved.

He said that it was intended that their statements would be taken in the normal way by members of the Garda Síochána who were then attached to the ODCE. Instead, however, the statements were obtained through solicitors from a legal firm.

The ODCE pointed out that it has now undergone substantial organisational change and that it was simply not equipped to undertake parallel investigations on the scale involved. I want to say this: I have not spent the past six years as head of Government and making very difficult decisions only to hear again now the allegation in respect of white-collar crime that people can walk away, that nobody is guilty and that nothing is being done about it.

“Let us, as a Parliament, decide what we must do with an organisation like the ODCE. I can confirm that when the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, had responsibility for jobs, requests by the ODCE to his then Department for resources were granted. Now I find that the ODCE says it was simply not equipped to take parallel investigations on the scale involved.

I can confirm that the Minister has asked the Director of Corporate Enforcement for a full report, including on the role of all professionals involved in this case. That report will cover the issues involved since 2008 when this case commenced – almost ten years ago. Nothing is ruled out.

“When Deputy Catherine Murphy had her full group, she put forward a proposition for a statutory standing body in the Dáil to deal with matters of corruption and so on.”

“The Minister will bring this before Government in due course. The Government will consider it next week, but I want the Minister to carry out an absolute review of what happened. It is not good enough.”

Sigh.

Transcript via Oireachtas.ie

Earlier: A Moment Of Panic

From top: Kevin O Connell from the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement; RTÉ Prime Time‘s David McCullagh and Dearbhail McDonald last night

“We [Irish Independent] actually knew back in 2015 that this particular prosecution of Sean Fitzpatrick was in serious trouble and serious jeopardy but we couldn’t report it at that time.

Back in 2015, legal argument came in the absence of a jury about key aspects of the trial and one of those included the manner in which statements were taken from two key witnesses Vincent Bergin and Kieran Kelly who were audit partners in Ernst & Young which we now know as EY.

But I suppose what I recall as the most staggering event possibly in 2015 was the day we were in court and the day that it emerged that the lead investigator Kevin O’Connell who was a solicitor, who wasn’t experie-, he was a solicitor for the ODCE and in charge of this investigation but he wasn’t overly experienced in dealing with serious indictable offences, he didn’t have much experience in the taking of witness statements.

And he admitted, it emerged, he went home, after six days of cross examanation in the Circuit Court, that he had shredded documents in what he described as a moment of panic when he went back to his office. I think it was the May bank holiday weekend.

And that was absolutely staggering at that point in time. We couldn’t report it because Mr O’Connell, whom the ODCE today revealed had been hospitalised in the immediate aftermath of that revelation for a period of time.

The case ended there and it is only now that the case has concluded, by way of direction of acquittal by the trial judge that we are able to report those facts.”

Dearbhail McDonald, of the Irish Independent on RTÉ’s Prime Time last night.

Meanwhile…

Gardaí are trained in taking witness statements. O’Connell, who was centrally involved, had never taken a witness statement before. The whole process, [Brendan[ Condon [Sean Fitzpatrick’s barrister] said, was “lawyer-led”. It was “statement by committee”, with the statements being constructed as if for civil proceedings. But this was not the commercial court. It was a criminal prosecution and it should have been investigated in the normal way.

Unknown to Condon, when O’Connell was in the witness box answering questions about these matters, the ODCE solicitor had a particular worry on his mind.

What documents should and should not be disclosed to the defence by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was one of the matters Condon was complaining about in his critique of how his client was being treated. O’Connell was worried about the decision not to disclose a particular document to the defence. According to Condon’s later view, that document would have revealed that the DPP was being kept informed as to how O’Connell was going about his work. The decision not to disclose the document, an email, Condon was to say in court in 2016, caused O’Connell to fear that he was going to be “hung out to dry” by the DPP.

O’Connell feared that the DPP was “deliberately suppressing the email”, Condon said, and this caused O’Connell to “panic”.

The banker, the investigator and the shredding of documents (Colm Keena, Irish Times)

Earlier: You Are Free To Go



This morning.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court

Former Anglo Irish Bank Chairman Sean Fitzpatrick with daughter Sarah (top left) leaves court after being formally acquitted of furnishing false information to Anglo’s auditors.

Mr Fitzpatrick was cleared yesterday on all charges after a ruling on day 126 of the trial concerning shredder-based “shortcomings in the prosecution’s evidence”.

Good times.

Sean Fitzpatrick formally acquitted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court (Breakingnews)

Yesterday: Acquitted

Rollingnews