What's wrong with a banking inquiry?

LookBehindYou

But remember, this is Ireland, and in Ireland NOBODY takes any responsibility, or so it seems.

Alcatel

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I do not like the type of tribunals that we currently have, but I would much sooner have them than mob rule and lynchings.

Many of those people currently held in opprobrium broke no laws and did nothing dishonest or immoral: they simply made bad decisions but did so in good faith.

Some people did wrong, and did so knowingly or recklessly. But I doubt if anybody intended to inflict the sort of damage that ensued from a sort of collective madness.

I am not sure, however, that we need a major inquiry. Most of what happened is already reasonably well known (even if some of those commenting on matters do not understand it). There are a few unanswered questions, some of which might need to be investigated as criminal matters. The residue of unknown stuff that should be exposed is relatively small, and some form of focused inquiry might be useful.

One of our banks loaned a load of money to another one of our banks before its shareholder meeting, reported that money as income rather than a loan to make the place look sound, and you're telling me in all good faith that you don't think that, in this one particular example of a raft of dealings we know for a fact happened (and goodness knows how many we don't) that there's nobody, nobody at all at the top of either institution who needs to get put in jail for serious fraud?

I get the sense that before every investigation into one of these matters, we tend to get the usual "I've looked up and down every tree in blah blah blah..." spiel from certain corners. Normally it then ends up being those same people, or people very close to them, whom it turns out were the criminals in the first place.

Spiritoftheseventies

Alcatel wrote: »

One of our banks loaned a load of money to another one of our banks before its shareholder meeting, reported that money as income rather than a loan to make the place look sound, and you're telling me in all good faith that you don't think that, in this one particular example of a raft of dealings we know for a fact happened (and goodness knows how many we don't) that there's nobody, nobody at all at the top of either institution who needs to get put in jail for serious fraud?

I get the sense that before every investigation into one of these matters, we tend to get the usual "I've looked up and down every tree in blah blah blah..." spiel from certain corners. Normally it then ends up being those same people, or people very close to them, whom it turns out were the criminals in the first place.

still beyond me how money that was transferred from A's account into B was not spotted. this went on for eight years. 16 entries as such. And it was never spotted. unreal.

jmayo

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I do not like the type of tribunals that we currently have, but I would much sooner have them than mob rule and lynchings.

ah the voice of reason and the champion of due process.
I am tried of where due process has gotten us.
We had Haughey, Burke, Lawlor, Flynn, Ahern, Lowry, Foley all with very questionable dealings.
Yet what were the outcomes; well some settled with revenue, some got off with a sick note, some just sail along flogging their autbiographies and one went to jail for his misdemeanours.
AFAIK Lawlor went to jail for contempt and not for his actual dodgy dealings.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Many of those people currently held in opprobrium broke no laws and did nothing dishonest or immoral: they simply made bad decisions but did so in good faith.

I presume you are talking about central bank and IFRSA ?
They were criminally negligent in their failure to protect the Irish banking system because they allowed their banking buddies to do whatever they liked.
If I, or most other people around here, were found to be so inept at our jobs and cause such damage do you think we would walk away with pension top up and retirement lumpsum ?
Would we f***.

Thye protected the institutions and the ones running the institutions as can be seen from the McErlean case where they actually targetted whistleblowers and got them to change their stories.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Some people did wrong, and did so knowingly or recklessly. But I doubt if anybody intended to inflict the sort of damage that ensued from a sort of collective madness.

It doesn't matter if they entended to inflict such damage or not, they were dishonest, they broke laws.
If there are some loopholes they used to pull those stokes then it just goes to show how shabby our laws are in this regard and gives credence to the belive that we were the wild west of the financial world.

What seanie did with his director loans AFAIK was in breach of normal company laws, although some say it isn't.
It was also misleading the markets which would be deemed very serious in some jurisdictions.
Similarly the providing loans to buy the company's own shares (or the CFDs) and the rent a desposit scheme with IL&P.
In the case of the latter it will turn out to be very serious if it turns out that Central Bank actually encouraged this behaviour.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I am not sure, however, that we need a major inquiry. Most of what happened is already reasonably well known (even if some of those commenting on matters do not understand it). There are a few unanswered questions, some of which might need to be investigated as criminal matters. The residue of unknown stuff that should be exposed is relatively small, and some form of focused inquiry might be useful.

Do you undertand it all ?
Would you think that any of the above matters would result in people being prosecuted in say the USA and result in class actions by investors ?

Alcatel wrote: »

One of our banks loaned a load of money to another one of our banks before its shareholder meeting, reported that money as income rather than a loan to make the place look sound, and you're telling me in all good faith that you don't think that, in this one particular example of a raft of dealings we know for a fact happened (and goodness knows how many we don't) that there's nobody, nobody at all at the top of either institution who needs to get put in jail for serious fraud?
...

They hugely misled shareholders and investors which in most stock markets are deemed very serious matters, but in little old Ireland where the likes of insider dealers have to be pushed to resign, nevermind face criminal proceeding, this type of thing isn't deemed that serious.

bayviewclose wrote: »

still beyond me how money that was transferred from A's account into B was not spotted. this went on for eight years. 16 entries as such. And it was never spotted. unreal.

It had to have been spotted, but you now wink wink and all that.
Ask an accountant of a small company if auditors ask about directors loans and if they ask to see the transactions on those loans.
So if that is normal practice with small company woudl it be unreasonable to think it would be done with actual banking institution?

Were the central bank/IFSRA not aware of it ?

P. Breathnach

Alcatel wrote: »

One of our banks loaned a load of money to another one of our banks before its shareholder meeting, reported that money as income rather than a loan to make the place look sound, and you're telling me in all good faith that you don't think that, in this one particular example of a raft of dealings we know for a fact happened (and goodness knows how many we don't) that there's nobody, nobody at all at the top of either institution who needs to get put in jail for serious fraud?...

I said nothing of the sort, and it is difficult to conduct a reasonable discussion if you impute to me views I do not hold.

Do we need an inquiry into the events on which you comment, given that the facts are already in the public domain?

Spiritoftheseventies

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I said nothing of the sort, and it is difficult to conduct a reasonable discussion if you impute to me views I do not hold.

Do we need an inquiry into the events on which you comment, given that the facts are already in the public domain?

Some of the facts are in the public domain. Sure the shreaders over heated when Gardai did their raid on Anglo Irish last year. And why is FitzPatrick still driving around in that car of his. So much for repossession orders.

P. Breathnach

jmayo wrote: »

ah the voice of reason and the champion of due process.

It sounds as if that is to be held against me.

I am tried of where due process has gotten us.
We had Haughey, Burke, Lawlor, Flynn, Ahern, Lowry, Foley all with very questionable dealings.
Yet what were the outcomes; well some settled with revenue, some got off with a sick note, some just sail along flogging their autbiographies and one went to jail for his misdemeanours.
AFAIK Lawlor went to jail for contempt and not for his actual dodgy dealings.

That's part of why I said that I don't like the type of tribunals we have. Those limited outcomes have come only after an unconscionable time and a shedload of money. My intention was to suggest that, bad and all as such tribunals are, to proceed without some process is even worse.

I presume you are talking about central bank and IFRSA ?

Not particularly.

They were criminally negligent in their failure to protect the Irish banking system because they allowed their banking buddies to do whatever they liked.

Criminally negligent? What crime did they commit?

If I, or most other people around here, were found to be so inept at our jobs and cause such damage do you think we would walk away with pension top up and retirement lumpsum ?
Would we f***.

Thye protected the institutions and the ones running the institutions as can be seen from the McErlean case where they actually targetted whistleblowers and got them to change their stories.

If we know all this, why not simply put matters through appropriate processes like prosecution in the courts? We don't need an inquiry in Dublin Castle.

It doesn't matter if they entended to inflict such damage or not, they were dishonest, they broke laws.

In some cases, probably. In most cases I think that bankers simply made bad decisions.

If there are some loopholes they used to pull those stokes then it just goes to show how shabby our laws are in this regard and gives credence to the belive that we were the wild west of the financial world.

I think that we were too loose. But it was the mood of the age, and not just in Ireland.

What seanie did with his director loans AFAIK was in breach of normal company laws, although some say it isn't.
It was also misleading the markets which would be deemed very serious in some jurisdictions.
Similarly the providing loans to buy the company's own shares (or the CFDs) and the rent a desposit scheme with IL&P.
In the case of the latter it will turn out to be very serious if it turns out that Central Bank actually encouraged this behaviour.

It looks to me, on the face of things, that some of the things done in Anglo-Irish were wrong. I would be for a properly-resourced criminal investigation (particularly an expertise resource) rather than a public inquiry or a mob response. If other institutions collaborated in any wrongdoing, they should also be targeted.

Do you undertand it all ?

No. I do understand some of it, and I also recognise that I do not know all the facts. That's not particularly relevant, as I have no formal role in relation to any of these matters.

Would you think that any of the above matters would result in people being prosecuted in say the USA and result in class actions by investors ?

I hope that you are not implying that the US legal system is the best model to adopt. It seems to me to be extraordinarily cumbersome in matters of this sort (okay, I'm giving a non-expert opinion here). I think you have identified a good point concerning investors being defrauded, but I cannot see an obvious route to compensating them. If there has been fraud, those who perpetrated it should be punished.

They hugely misled shareholders and investors which in most stock markets are deemed very serious matters, but in little old Ireland where the likes of insider dealers have to be pushed to resign, nevermind face criminal proceeding, this type of thing isn't deemed that serious.

I agree that we have a poor record in dealing with certain types of misbehaviour. It's cultural. One factor is that our big business leaders tend to socialise with our senior politicians and with leading lawyers and accountants. They are tied to each other in a network of personal relationships. There are probably some financial relationships strengthening those ties, even if it is nothing more than making it easier to get loans. I think that we have an insufficient sense of professional distance. The Galway tent epitomised that.

It had to have been spotted, but you now wink wink and all that.
Ask an accountant of a small company if auditors ask about directors loans and if they ask to see the transactions on those loans.
So if that is normal practice with small company woudl it be unreasonable to think it would be done with actual banking institution?

Would you expect me to say anything other than yes? But the rules for banks are different, presumably because banks are in the business of lending money. If a bank gave a director a mortgage loan to buy a modest family home, it's not really different from a director of an electrical goods shop buying a washing machine there.

Were the central bank/IFSRA not aware of it ?

I don't know. Do you?

jmayo

P. Breathnach wrote: »

It sounds as if that is to be held against me.

That's part of why I said that I don't like the type of tribunals we have. Those limited outcomes have come only after an unconscionable time and a shedload of money. My intention was to suggest that, bad and all as such tribunals are, to proceed without some process is even worse.

I agree the tribunals in Dublin Castle, etc have been a joke providing massive fortunes for legal teams.
They have resulted in drip drip revelations that have resulted in no real prosecutions, well apart from a couple of the foot soldiers (one who spilled his guts eventually) and one TD.

The only type of enquiry I would contenance is a DIRT style enquiry and a criminal enquiry carried out by CAB.
If CAB do not have the reources then hire foriegners, similar to what Iceland has done, by bringing in the head of the Elf corruption enquiry.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Criminally negligent? What crime did they commit?

Well the Anglo dodgy deals were probably breaking company law.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

If we know all this, why not simply put matters through appropriate processes like prosecution in the courts? We don't need an inquiry in Dublin Castle.

Again we need very small enquiry

P. Breathnach wrote: »

In some cases, probably. In most cases I think that bankers simply made bad decisions.

Ehh Anglo.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I think that we were too loose. But it was the mood of the age, and not just in Ireland.

Ah the McGreevey and Biffo cop out clause.
So what if bankers in other countries played fast and loose.
Did the bankers in Spain, another construction bubble, do the same or more correctly were they allowed do the same by an totally inept incestous regulatory authority ?

P. Breathnach wrote: »

It looks to me, on the face of things, that some of the things done in Anglo-Irish were wrong. I would be for a properly-resourced criminal investigation (particularly an expertise resource) rather than a public inquiry or a mob response. If other institutions collaborated in any wrongdoing, they should also be targeted.

On the face of things you think ? :rolleyes:
Jeeze they hid director loans, they provided loans to customers to allow the company's own shares and the massaged the books to make it appear their deposit base was much higher than it actaully was.
And that is not wrongdoing.
Other institutions did collaborate in perverting their accounts.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I hope that you are not implying that the US legal system is the best model to adopt. It seems to me to be extraordinarily cumbersome in matters of this sort (okay, I'm giving a non-expert opinion here). I think you have identified a good point concerning investors being defrauded, but I cannot see an obvious route to compensating them. If there has been fraud, those who perpetrated it should be punished.

And you think our justice system hasn't been cumbersome or IMHO putting it more correctly totally oblivious.
That is where class action suits can screw the perps who do blow investors money.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I agree that we have a poor record in dealing with certain types of misbehaviour. It's cultural. One factor is that our big business leaders tend to socialise with our senior politicians and with leading lawyers and accountants. They are tied to each other in a network of personal relationships. There are probably some financial relationships strengthening those ties, even if it is nothing more than making it easier to get loans. I think that we have an insufficient sense of professional distance. The Galway tent epitomised that.

Very true it is a cosy cartel, as once labelled by one who has been probably a player in it himself.
Has any major entity ever gone to jail in Ireland for fraud, insider dealing, corruption ?
There was a high profile case of insider dealing recently where the individual had to have huge amount of pressure to resign.
At least in US they send theirs to jail.
Would Milikan or Martha Stewart ever have gone to jail if they were in Ireland ?

One of our only bankers to have visited a jail was Gallagher and that was thanks to the UK authorities in NI.
Ours just ignored the fact probably due to his political connections.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Would you expect me to say anything other than yes? But the rules for banks are different, presumably because banks are in the business of lending money. If a bank gave a director a mortgage loan to buy a modest family home, it's not really different from a director of an electrical goods shop buying a washing machine there.

It is a hell of a lot different to give directors huge loans, bigger actually than those of any other bank directors worldwide AFAIK, and then hide them from the annual accounts.
It is also a hell of a lot different for a bank to lend hundreds of millions to select customers in order to buy the banks shares to prop up it's share price.
The whole thing stinks.

Anyway no matter the finer points I think we both agree that there shopuld be investigations, including criminal ones, and that the rules need to be tightened and enforced in future.

Alcatel

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I said nothing of the sort, and it is difficult to conduct a reasonable discussion if you impute to me views I do not hold.

Do we need an inquiry into the events on which you comment, given that the facts are already in the public domain?

Apologies, I was making a rethorical statement, sorry if it came across wrong.

You're making an assumption there: that we do know all the facts. It's my experience, and I think Ireland's, that if something falls out of the tree then there's usually a whole lot more there to come down if you go over and give it a very good shake.

P. Breathnach

Alcatel wrote: »

Apologies, I was making a rethorical statement, sorry if it came across wrong.

Thank you.

You're making an assumption there: that we do know all the facts. It's my experience, and I think Ireland's, that if something falls out of the tree then there's usually a whole lot more there to come down if you go over and give it a very good shake.

I don't want an inquiry into things that are known; I don't want an elaborate public inquiry into some apparently-criminal matters when a criminal investigation might work faster and better; I am concerned about how much time, effort, and money might be spent on scapegoating rather than uncovering real wrongdoing.

But yes, setting aside those reservations, there will likely remain a set of questions into which we should enquire. [We also need an efficient form of inquiry, but that's another debate.]

Alcatel

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Thank you.



I don't want an inquiry into things that are known; I don't want an elaborate public inquiry into some apparently-criminal matters when a criminal investigation might work faster and better; I am concerned about how much time, effort, and money might be spent on scapegoating rather than uncovering real wrongdoing.

But yes, setting aside those reservations, there will likely remain a set of questions into which we should enquire. [We also need an efficient form of inquiry, but that's another debate.]

We had an efficient form of inquiry: Dail inquiries. But the courts decided that (unlike in other countries) the Dail shouldn't have that power. We ought to change that.

Shea O'Meara

Fianna Fáil TD Michael Ahern says an investigation would be turned by some people into a circus and it could be damaging to the reputation of banks.

http://news.eircom.net/breakingnews/17074887/

.....So if I'm reading this right, we all know there's issues, so much so that the state needed to bail them out....but we don't want anyone looking too deeply into it because we don't want to embarrass them?

Deputy Ahern also said that the practices that led to the banking crisis - excessive lending and questionable types of lending - were already well known by the general public.

"Anyone that doesn't know that is living in fantasy land," he said.

We are supposed to accept this light and breezy explanation of mistakes made, with no mention of any wrong doing or fraudulent behavior?

So....we're going to say 'Hey they f***** up whaddya gonna do?' and leave it there?
This attitude gives the criminals a free pass. What’s to stop any future repetition?

Shea O'Meara

At least we have some opposition;

http://news.eircom.net/breakingnews/17079572/

Chalk one up for Labour.

Red Alert

The enquiry needs to be able to do six things in order to be effective:

1) Call any person, without exception, before it.
2) Compel any question to be answered, on pain of contempt.
3) Make findings of fact.
4) Present those findings, unedited by any minister or politician.
5) Instruct the DPP to prosecute persons who may be guilty of a crime, or prosecute said individuals after publication of its report.
6) Issue direction to disbar any member of the public from being a director of any company.

If some parts of this are unconstitutional, maybe a roll-up of the children's rights referendum, the judge-pay referendum and the necessary changes to enable this enquiry to proceed could be put before the public.

The only person currently in jail for dodgy behaviour in this country is Frank Dunlop. Given how much help he was to the Tribunal, and the gravity of the behaviour of our bankers, developers, politicians and civil servants who were supposed to police and control the bankers, Frank Dunlop's crimes seem small. Something tells me that bankers, developers and civil servants will escape justice, unless a hard-hitting enquiry is launched that has the ability to direct prosecutions to be taken.

We do not want a situation where many of the main players can claim a "cognitive impairment" as Albert Reynold's layers did during the Mahon tribunal. Also, to be of any use, the findings of this body need to be made quickly. There is no point only getting the process going in five years' time.

The enquiry should be chaired by a high-court or supreme-court judge. In fact, a two-phase inquiry may be needed. The idea would be to set up a special-purpose "Financial court" similar to the family law court or the special criminal court. Part 1 would be the calling of all relevant witnesses etc under its terms of reference. Part 2 would be discharging proceedings against any relevant persons after publication of its main report.

old boy

for an inquirey to be sucessful it must not have its hands tied, which every inquirey so far has, it needs to be given open ended powers, including the power to dish out punishment if required, plus draft new laws is it thinks they are required.