THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT has published more recordings from Anglo executives and this time, the former CEO of the now defunct bank can be heard calling the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator a “f*cking shower of clowns”.
With the bank losing a significant amount of money on a daily basis – as much as a €1 billion – David Drumm and John Bowe, the bank’s head of treasury at the time, discuss how Anglo is close to breaking Central Bank rules on how many billions they can withdraw a day.
“The regulatory minimums are not in themselves a disaster for the bank unless somebody finds out about them,” Drumm says.
Recorded some time in late August or early September 2008, Drumm adds that he wants to meet with “our friends on Dame Street [the Central Bank]… I don’t want any fucking bolloxology from them.”
The latest recordings, which can be heard on Independent.ie, also link the former Finance Minister Brain Lenihan and former Taoiseach Brian Cowen to the banking crisis, with the paper pointing out how Drumm and his colleagues considered them to be pushovers.
Following the release of the latest round of tapes, Drumm issued a statement to RTÉ News overnight in which he said he would no longer allow himself to be used as the scapegoat for the banking crisis by “politically connected former bankers and politically protected senior public servants”.
He attacked the “drip, drip, drip” of the tapes by The Irish Independent and has repeated his call for all recordings made at Irish banks to be made public.
The tapes reveal the bank’s executives discussing crucial matters concerning the bank in the run-up to the bank guarantee in September 2008.
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