IT HAS NEVER been easier to get away with white-collar crime in Ireland, according to senior counsel Remy Farrell.
There is currently a huge backlog of reported white-collar offences in the country – put down to the fact that the gardaí’s national fraud bureau is severely under-resourced.
Assistant Garda Commissioner, Derek Byrne, has gone on record to say that criminals have now realised that they can do more damage with a computer than by walking into a bank with a gun.
And that has been born out (monetarily) with recent cases.
Recently, Breifne O’Brien and Thomas Byrne dominated headlines with their separate schemes. But are they as uncommon as we think?
The Chief Executive of anti-corruption agency Transparency Ireland John Devitt told TheJournal.ie:
“Ten years ago, it was estimated that Ireland was losing about €2 billion a year to white collar crime and that doesn’t take into account the cost of the criminality in our banks prior to the collapse of the economy.
In spite of the huge cost of fraud and corruption to taxpayers, this problem has never been, and still isn’t, a high priority for the Government.
“So it’s no surprise to see the Gardaí have been grossly under-resourced to tackle the issue.”
What’s being done
A new training course has been launched which will see 40 members of the force taking part in a three-week intensive course to become specialised in ‘economic crime’.
A new group will then be nominated to become specialists by divisional chief superintendents in the new year.
The aim is to have trained members of the force in each garda division.
Is it enough?
John Devitt says, “While the transfer of Gardaí to investigate fraud is welcome in principle, I’m not sure this is going to solve the problem on its own.
It would probably be much more productive to recruit forensic accountants and investigators from outside the Gardaí.
“A similar approach has worked for CAB so there’s no reason why bringing civilian staff in to support the Fraud Squad would not work.”
Transparency Ireland added that it has called for a review of the resources and working practises of all agencies dealing with corruption and white collar crime.
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