EARLIER TODAY, FORMER Anglo Irish Bank CEO David Drumm was given a six-year sentence for his role in a bank fraud scheme in 2008.
With that sentence, Drumm became the latest banker to be jailed in Ireland.
It was the State’s case that Drumm conspired with Irish Life & Permanent’s former CEO, Denis Casey, Anglo’s former financial director Willie McAteer and former head of treasury at Anglo, John Bowe, among others, to carry out €7.2 billion in fraudulent circular transactions in order to bolster the customer deposits figure on Anglo’s balance sheet.
The State also alleged that this €7.2 billion was falsely accounted for as part of the bank’s customer deposits in preliminary accounts published on 3 December 2008, therefore misleading the market as to Anglo’s true strength.
Today, the jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court returned unanimous verdicts of guilty on a charge of conspiracy to defraud, and one of false accounting, after just over 10 and a half hours of deliberations.
Drumm (51) of Skerries, Co Dublin, was on bail throughout the 87-day trial, which was the third-longest criminal trial in the history of the State.
Here’s who else has been jailed over their roles in the same case that Drumm was jailed over.
Denis Casey: Former group chief executive Irish Life and Permanent
Denis Casey was convicted two years ago of a €7.2 billion conspiracy to defraud.
He had pleaded not guilty to conspiring to mislead investors, depositors and lenders about the true health of Anglo Irish Bank in 2008.
He and three other bankers had all pleaded not guilty to conspiring together and with others to defraud by setting up the aforementioned €7.2 billion circular transaction scheme in order to bolster Anglo’s balance sheet with the intention of misleading investors.
But on 9 June 2016, he was convicted, before being sentenced to two years and nine months in prison.
The prosecution’s case was that Casey and three other men were involved in setting up the circular scheme of billion euro transactions where Anglo lent money to Irish Life and Permanent (ILP) and ILP sent the money back, via their assurance firm Irish Life Assurance, to Anglo.
The €7.2 billion deposit was later accounted for in Anglo’s preliminary results on 3 December 2008 as part of Anglo’s customer deposits figure.
One man out of the four, Peter Fitzpatrick, was found not guilty.
The scheme was designed so that the deposits came from the assurance company and would be treated as customer deposits.
Judge Martin Nolan said that former Anglo Irish Bank executives John Bowe and Willie McAteer, and the former Group Chief Executive of ILP, Denis Casey, took part in a scheme that was “deceitful, dishonest and corrupt”.
He said they had failed to act with honesty and integrity by manufacturing €7.2bn in deposits in what were obviously “sham transactions”.
He told Casey that he had made a grave error of judgement in authorising the transaction with Anglo. He said he was a man who should have known better. The judge also told Casey that Anglo were the authors of the scheme but that he had behaved disgracefully and reprehensibly in co-operating with it.
Casey told gardaí that he only agreed to the short term loans with Anglo on condition that there was no risk to his company and that he did not know or intend that Anglo would misrepresent the loans as customer deposits.
Willie McAteer: Former Anglo Irish Bank executive
Willie McAteer was sentenced to three and a half years in jail.
McAteer is the only one of the three to have a previous conviction. He was convicted in 2014 of providing unlawful loans from Anglo Irish Bank to 10 property developers, dubbed the ‘Maple Ten’, in July 2008 in breach of Section 60 of the Companies Act.
He carried out 240 hours of community service in lieu of a two-year prison sentence.
On 29 July 2016, Judge Nolan jailed McAteer for three and a half years, saying that McAteer had authorised the transactions when he knew what he was doing was underhand, deceitful and corrupt.
He said McAteer was a respected leader of huge experience whose actions in 2008 were reprehensible.
John Bowe: Former head of Capital Markets at Anglo Irish Bank.
John Bowe was sentenced to two years in prison, with Judge Martin Nolan telling him that the lower sentence was because he was “a lesser functionary” and not a board member.
He had been captured in recordings – which were released by the Irish Independent in 2013 and dubbed the Anglo Tapes – discussing a strategy of convincing the Central Bank to invest €7m in Anglo, but understanding the bank’s liquidity problems.
At the time, he insisted in a statement that he at no time tried to mislead the Central Bank nor was he aware of a strategy to do so.
- Additional reporting: CCC Nuacht
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