WhistleblowerIRL and regulatory accountability

KyussBishop

Been following this rather good Golem XIV blog, and one recurring thing the author mentions, is the case of the Irish whistleblower who went by the pseudonym WhistleblowerIRL; he worked at Unicredit in the run up to the economic crisis, and tried to blow the whistle about significant fraudulent lending by the bank, but was faced with inaction, and even today he can not get a good hearing with any Irish political/media/regulatory officials/journalists, and when trying to disclose information to the regulator, was told that if he told them about any wrongdoing, he would be referred to the police.

Can read the entry here:
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2013/03/unpleasantness-in-belgium-silence-in-ireland

This is a pretty unbelievable level of unaccountability, and total lack of action against fraud from regulatory officials; this is not just apathy in the face of fraud either, it looks almost like trying to suppress evidence of it and implicitly threaten whistleblowers. Really shameful stuff, which should be getting quite a lot more attention than it is.


Would be good to hear what others know of this (to flesh out the background of the whistleblower), and why it doesn't seem to be garnering any attention in the media; as subservient/impotent as news media is in this country, am surprised there's not any journalist who would dig into something as significant as this (if they are also being threatened/coerced away from it, or if there is a chilling-effect in place against searching it out, that in itself is something very worthy of having the whistle blown on as well).

thebman

I wouldn't be surprised but how credible is the source ?

KyussBishop

Pretty credible; the guy who blogged about it there has worked at the BBC/C4 doing documentaries for years, and his father before him did some really high profile documentaries (highly recommend 'The Age of Uncertainty' there as well, for those interests in economics):
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/about-me/

On further inspection, WhistleblowerIRL has a blog here, and his name is Jonathan Sugarman, and he's been featured in Village magazine about the fraud:
http://whistleblowerirl.blogspot.ie/

Otherwise though, he's had a very hard time getting attention to the issue in Ireland, by either news-media/'journalists' or politicians/regulators.

KyussBishop

Going back through some of his old blog posts, it seems some Irish journalists have been subject to legal threats against reporting on any of this:

The lone voices reporting on my story have been Kathleen Barrington in the Sunday Business Post and Michael Smith who dedicated the cover story of last December's Village magazine to my story. Michael Smith had to delay printing of the magazine on account of telephone threats made to his office by one of Dublin's leading law firms. Obviously, the threats were made on behalf of the firm's client - UniCredit Bank Ireland.

http://whistleblowerirl.blogspot.ie/2011/08/freedom-of-speech-in-ireland.html

That probably explains the relative silence; the legal threats have likely had a chilling effect, with only those willing to brave such threats, publishing on it.