Anglo Bankers Jailed

homerjay2005

Great news as all of this crowd thought they were untouchable however it's all meaningless until they get that Rat weasel Fitzpatrick behind bars and Get Drumm on the first plane home to join him there.

Hopefully it's a flagship day for anti-corruption in this country and its the start of multiple jail terms for all people connected with the crash.

What are the chance of Fitzpatrick getting time I wonder?

darkpagandeath

Ellie2008 wrote: »

She was a minions though, an assistant manager is not a senior role in a bank.

Doing something illegal is dependant on your status within the bank ? You have people on here going on about scumbags using a hard life defence. And yet coming out with she is a minion as a defence. Laughable.

Ash.J.Williams

Patsy's

KomradeBishop

kazamo wrote: »

They weren't convicted of anything that caused these problems however.
The law they fell foul of was defrauding the Revenue Commissioners regarding the identity of accounts.
There isn't enough wrongdoing in that to bring a country to it's knees.

Al Capone wasn't convicted for running any kind of criminal gangland enterprise, in the end they got him on tax fraud - similar situation in my view, I'd be glad to see people like them thrown in prison, with whatever charges can be made stick.

K4t

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Doing something illegal is dependant on your status within the bank ? You have people on here going on about scumbags using a hard life defence. And yet coming out with she is a minion as a defence. Laughable.

Good point. A crime is a crime.

JonEBGud

Why isn't Drumm and Fitzpatrick doing porridge?
Cause the're friends of friends who know friends.

KomradeBishop

Fleawuss wrote: »

The higher ups cannot get away with things if those below them can be pressured. Some "minnow" will say why should I take the rap for so and so...

The higher ups tend to not dirty their own hands by acting directly - they usually create 'perverse incentives' in the company work environment, that implicitly reward fraudulent behaviour.

Usually this is done by creating monetary incentives - e.g. 'performance' based bonuses etc., where the more loans you give out, the more you're rewarded - what's left unstated, is that the more reckless you are with the lending, the more bonuses you can get (throwing-away the quality standards for loans is implicit in how the workplace is setup, but it's left to the lower-downs to dirty their hands with it); the higher-ups are not stupid, they know that this is what their incentives result in, but it offers them complete plausible deniability.

Similar situation with 'appraisal fraud' - if an appraiser gives an accurate/realistic valuation for a house, thank them for their work and then stop doing business with them, until you get an appraiser who starts massively inflating the valuation of houses (eventually appraisers must learn, implicitly, to give you the valuation you want, not the real valuation) - when this becomes a trend industry-wide, soon enough honest appraisers find they have little-to-no work available, and all you have left are fraudulent appraisers.

This creates a 'Greshams Dynamic', where Bad/Fraudulent Appraisers drive Good/Honest Appraisers out of the market - this offers complete plausible deniability for the higher-ups here, as you'll never be able to nail them directly for stuff like this, even though it's almost certain that they're fully aware of it.

Recommend William K. Blacks book, 'The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One' - deals with an older economic crisis, but explains how it all works extremely well; that author put away thousands of fraudsters like the 3 in the OP, back in the 80's 'Savings and Loans' crisis in the US.

Hurtbuthealing

JonEBGud wrote: »

Why isn't Drumm and Fitzpatrick doing porridge?
Cause the're friends of friends who know friends.

Fitzpatrick was acquitted by a jury at his last trial and is due to stand trial on further charges in October.
Drumm is the subject of extradition proceedings, so lets just wait and see what happens.

FalconGirl

VisibleGorilla wrote: »

Complete waste of a jail space.

Only violent criminals should be placed in custody.

Stupid comment. Really like. White collar crime must not be tolerated.

kazamo

A crime was committed then yes they should face punishment for it.
But we have yet to see any evidence that any of these three were directly involved\responsible for the banking collapse.

At this stage, we are 4.5 years into this government and not one person has been found responsible for the banking collapse. We have had lots of apologies but no one is guilty or any punishment administered.

I have a suspicion that if Seanie, Fingers etc and others had been convicted by now, we may well have never seen these three individuals in a court room. There was a need to produce a pound of flesh and we got it yesterday but as of today 1st August 2015, not one banker or other responsible person has been found guilty of the greatest financial disaster ever to befall this country. Anglo was nationalised almost six and a half years ago and yet all we have brought to a conclusion is a scam re doctoring the names on accounts

So you may be happy with these three in prison now, me, I see them as wrongdoer's and deserve punishment but it is a sad day that since 2009 this is all the convictions we have come up with.

I would much rather see their pensions being cut\eliminated for these convictions. An attachment order even on their pensions regarding the interest the Rev Comm lost out on.

An ongoing hefty financial penalty carries a far bigger punishment than 18 months in prison.

2011

Diego Simeone wrote: »

Agreed. Fines and community service makes more sense for this sort of thing. These people deprived the tax payer of money, now they're going to deprive them of more. And for what?

For what?
As a deterrent, it may make people like this think twice.

IMHO we need to take white collar crime far more seriously in this country.

FAILSAFE 00

cruizer101 wrote: »

Wahay finally some bankers jailed.

Nice!

I hope they get a bonus in the showers.

hatrickpatrick

homerjay2005 wrote: »

What are the chance of Fitzpatrick getting time I wonder?

It's hard to see Nidge getting no time when they've jailed Aido, Tommy and Elmo

SpaceTime

While it's a bit harsh on the administrative staff member, it does send out a very clear and culturally changing message: following orders isn't a defence.

That's likely to cause a hell of a lot of difficulties for anyone instructing staff to do dodgy things and it'll give potential whistle blowers more of a sense they need to report illegal practices, even if just to protect themselves.

hatrickpatrick

kazamo wrote: »

They weren't convicted of anything that caused these problems however.
The law they fell foul of was defrauding the Revenue Commissioners regarding the identity of accounts.
There isn't enough wrongdoing in that to bring a country to it's knees.

It was Seanie's secret bank accounts and hidden loans which eventually caused investors to lose confidence in Anglo Irish Bank.

The "Paddy's Day Massacre", or "Black Monday", in 2008 saw Anglo lose almost all of its already depleted stock value in a single day. The cause of this was subsequently attributed to "someone spreading false rumours" about Anglo in the stock exchange on the day in question.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/regulator-starts-inquiry-into-false-rumours-about-banks-1.905250

It was only a short time later that the first of many scandals involving Anglo - FitzPatrick's hidden loans - was revealed publicly for the first time. The Golden Circle loans, IIRC, were revealed later.

In that context, it's hard to imagine that there isn't a connection between news of the hidden loans leaking, and those "false rumours" being spread which caused Anglo's share price to plummet.

Again, one has to talk about complex "root cause" issues, which in cases like this can go back years or even decades, but I remember watching every development related to Anglo like a hawk (as one of the short-sighted shmucks who had a bunch of Anglo shares ) while all this was going on, and at the time when FitzPatrick's loans were revealed that was the "aha!" moment for a lot of people who had been wondering exactly what those alleged "false rumours" had been about.

In that context, if those loans were one of the major reasons for the collapse in Anglo's share confidence and if that was in turn one of the major excuses for issuing the blanket bank guarantee, then FitzPatrick and those who aided and abetted his behaviour should rightly be ascribed a proportion of the blame for the economic hell which followed.

Samaris

I agree that white-collar crime needs to be dealt with more severely, and I must admit that I don't know as much about the banking collapse as I should. If these three were just minions, then they do deserve a smack for abetting something that they knew was illegal, but the ones that really need dragging out of their safeholes is the ones that gave the orders. It can't and shouldn't stop here. While the minions acted dishonestly, they shouldn't get the full weight of blame for the whole thing, and I think their sentences reflect that the courts felt they were pawns rather than players.

Ellie2008

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It was Seanie's secret bank accounts and hidden loans which eventually caused investors to lose confidence in Anglo Irish Bank.

The "Paddy's Day Massacre", or "Black Monday", in 2008 saw Anglo lose almost all of its already depleted stock value in a single day. The cause of this was subsequently attributed to "someone spreading false rumours" about Anglo in the stock exchange on the day in question.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/regulator-starts-inquiry-into-false-rumours-about-banks-1.905250

It was only a short time later that the first of many scandals involving Anglo - FitzPatrick's hidden loans - was revealed publicly for the first time. The Golden Circle loans, IIRC, were revealed later.

In that context, it's hard to imagine that there isn't a connection between news of the hidden loans leaking, and those "false rumours" being spread which caused Anglo's share price to plummet.

Again, one has to talk about complex "root cause" issues, which in cases like this can go back years or even decades, but I remember watching every development related to Anglo like a hawk (as one of the short-sighted shmucks who had a bunch of Anglo shares ) while all this was going on, and at the time when FitzPatrick's loans were revealed that was the "aha!" moment for a lot of people who had been wondering exactly what those alleged "false rumours" had been about.

In that context, if those loans were one of the major reasons for the collapse in Anglo's share confidence and if that was in turn one of the major excuses for issuing the blanket bank guarantee, then FitzPatrick and those who aided and abetted his behaviour should rightly be ascribed a proportion of the blame for the economic hell which followed.

The accounts they didn't report to Revenue couldn't have been loan accounts, you don't pay DIRT on debit balances obviously, they'd have to have been current or deposit accounts liable for DIRT.

KomradeBishop

SpaceTime wrote: »

While it's a bit harsh on the administrative staff member, it does send out a very clear and culturally changing message: following orders isn't a defence.

That's likely to cause a hell of a lot of difficulties for anyone instructing staff to do dodgy things and it'll give potential whistle blowers more of a sense they need to report illegal practices, even if just to protect themselves.

Unfortunately, this case really doesn't change much of anything I don't think - these are just token criminals, people lower down who are being used as a handy scapegoat, to give the impression something is being done.

They deserve prison, and even harsher sentences than what they got, but this isn't even scratching the surface really - and whistleblowers, from what I can see, are still treated incredibly harshly if they are found out.

jobeenfitz

If I had have been one of these three, on interrogation I would have shopped Seanie and any other bosses for any and everything I had on them. Wouldn't go down on my own. fu*ck them all up!

hatrickpatrick

Samaris wrote: »

the ones that really need dragging out of their safeholes is the ones that gave the orders. It can't and shouldn't stop here.

It won't - FitzPatrick himself is up for trial this coming October, and judging by how quickly his lawyers filed a motion to delay that following the sentencing yesterday, one can safely assume that he's sh!tting bricks.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0731/718484-sean-fitzpatrick-court/

Meanwhile, David Drumm - arguably an even bigger villain in this piece (if FitzPatrick is Nidge, Drumm is Terrence Big Balllllllllllls) - is still in the United States. And the DPP's objection to his giving video evidence to the banking enquiry and to the publication of a statement he gave to the enquiry would suggest that they are still intending to charge him and demand his extradition - otherwise, why would they care if he gave evidence to the enquiry? To my mind, their objection is a clear signal that they don't want him talking to any enquiry that might damage the prospects of a successful prosecution.

Of course, a more cynical theory would be that the DPP's office is in cahoots with Drumm and is simply helping to shield him from justice, but given how zealously (albeit slowly) they are pursuing the other cases, this seems highly unlikely.

Ellie2008

jobeenfitz wrote: »

If I had have been one of these three, on interrogation I would have shopped Seanie and any other bosses for any and everything I had on them. Wouldn't go down on my own. fu*ck them all up!

This^^^^^Im literally baffled about how they didn't sing like canaries!!!

SpaceTime

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Unfortunately, this case really doesn't change much of anything I don't think - these are just token criminals, people lower down who are being used as a handy scapegoat, to give the impression something is being done.

They deserve prison, and even harsher sentences than what they got, but this isn't even scratching the surface really - and whistleblowers, from what I can see, are still treated incredibly harshly if they are found out.

The issue is that treating a legitimate whistle blower harshly should be a criminal offence.

Hushing people up is how a mafia or gang behaves!

Ellie2008

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It won't - FitzPatrick himself is up for trial this coming October, and judging by how quickly his lawyers filed a motion to delay that following the sentencing yesterday, one can safely assume that he's sh!tting bricks.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0731/718484-sean-fitzpatrick-court/

Meanwhile, David Drumm - arguably an even bigger villain in this piece (if FitzPatrick is Nidge, Drumm is Terrence Big Balllllllllllls) - is still in the United States. And the DPP's objection to his giving video evidence to the banking enquiry and to the publication of a statement he gave to the enquiry would suggest that they are still intending to charge him and demand his extradition - otherwise, why would they care if he gave evidence to the enquiry? To my mind, their objection is a clear signal that they don't want him talking to any enquiry that might damage the prospects of a successful prosecution.

Of course, a more cynical theory would be that the DPP's office is in cahoots with Drumm and is simply helping to shield him from justice, but given how zealously (albeit slowly) they are pursuing the other cases, this seems highly unlikely.

Seanie hasn't been charged with tax evasion that I'm aware of why not?

jobeenfitz

I have no sympathy for any dodgy bankers, fukn none but are we Irish a bit dodgy?, most of us have a bit of it in us. Except me, of course.

I won't shed any tears if Seanie and his like end up in jail but in the mean time we can take comfort in the fact that his life has taken a turn for the worse. I am sure most of his empire went down with Anglo and his standing in his community must have taken a similar dive. I am sure he can't walk down the street without some Paddy given him shhtick.

If he had have got jail soon after the crash I think he would have been better off cos it's the worry that kills ya. Also I believe most Irish people are fair and if a man has done his time we eventually forgive if not forget.

I believe Seanie is going through mental torture and may eventually go to Jail. The worst of both worlds. Jesus now as I'm writing this I am starting to feel a little sympathy, WTF is happening to me?

Fleawuss

SpaceTime wrote: »

While it's a bit harsh on the administrative staff member, it does send out a very clear and culturally changing message: following orders isn't a defence.

That's likely to cause a hell of a lot of difficulties for anyone instructing staff to do dodgy things and it'll give potential whistle blowers more of a sense they need to report illegal practices, even if just to protect themselves.

Nail on the head. Pressure from government agencies on the "minnows" and jailings will make it much more difficult for higher ups thinking they can induce "minnows" to do their bidding. Its all about hardening the target so that the scope for ducking and diving is narrowed.

Fleawuss

Ellie2008 wrote: »

This^^^^^Im literally baffled about how they didn't sing like canaries!!!

They might have assumed that they would be picking up litter in some public park for a few hours each day.

hatrickpatrick

jobeenfitz wrote: »

I have no sympathy for any dodgy bankers, fukn none but are we Irish a bit dodgy?, most of us have a bit of it in us. Except me, of course.

I won't shed any tears if Seanie and his like end up in jail but in the mean time we can take comfort in the fact that his life has taken a turn for the worse. I am sure most of his empire went down with Anglo and his standing in his community must have taken a similar dive. I am sure he can't walk down the street without some Paddy given him shhtick.

If he had have got jail soon after the crash I think he would have been better off cos it's the worry that kills ya. Also I believe most Irish people are fair and if a man has done his time we eventually forgive if not forget.

I believe Seanie is going through mental torture and may eventually go to Jail. The worst of both worlds. Jesus now as I'm writing this I am starting to feel a little sympathy, WTF is happening to me?

I was the same yesterday with these three. Like, they're people, with families and lives etc. But the fact is, they played a massive role in completely destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of Irish people, and they have to be held accountable for that.

Ellie2008

jobeenfitz wrote: »

I have no sympathy for any dodgy bankers, fukn none but are we Irish a bit dodgy?, most of us have a bit of it in us. Except me, of course.

I won't shed any tears if Seanie and his like end up in jail but in the mean time we can take comfort in the fact that his life has taken a turn for the worse. I am sure most of his empire went down with Anglo and his standing in his community must have taken a similar dive. I am sure he can't walk down the street without some Paddy given him shhtick.

If he had have got jail soon after the crash I think he would have been better off cos it's the worry that kills ya. Also I believe most Irish people are fair and if a man has done his time we eventually forgive if not forget.

I believe Seanie is going through mental torture and may eventually go to Jail. The worst of both worlds. Jesus now as I'm writing this I am starting to feel a little sympathy, WTF is happening to me?

I agree with you I think Seanie might well be doing some time in St.John of God before prison. You sound like this is very familiar to you something you want to get off your chest?! I disagree with you though I don't think we Irish forgive and forget once time is served, I think there are people who would happily hang Seanie themselves if they thought no one was looking. Seanie didn't all by his self cause the banking crises neither did Drumm though I'm sure both breached several provisions of company law & ethics & morality. There was a large number of factors at play - regulation, rating agency, subprime mortgages, securitisation etc etc. etc. I heard at interview on the radio with some guy from Waterford who had an ordinary job I think in the building industry who said when he went into one bank for a mortgage he exaggerated the amount another bank had quoted him leading the second bank to give him a mortgage for the larger amount, he was owning his little portion of blame for the crises, I'm sure he wasn't the only one. There was a lot of greed house extensions on credit, holidays on credit, new cars on credit. Of course there are then the other people who never benefitted from the credit bubble but lost out in the recession.

I'm thinking aloud at this stage!

Ellie2008

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I was the same yesterday with these three. Like, they're people, with families and lives etc. But the fact is, they played a massive role in completely destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of Irish people, and they have to be held accountable for that.

No they didn't they hid some accounts from Revenue for DIRT or other income tax purposes presumably same as the garlic importer = tax evasion, no one is accusing him of ruining the country.

KomradeBishop

SpaceTime wrote: »

The issue is that treating a legitimate whistle blower harshly should be a criminal offence.

Hushing people up is how a mafia or gang behaves!

When Jonathan Sugarman tried to report regulatory breaches at Unicredit, the central bank threated to refer him (Sugarman) to the police for investigation, if he reported any such information to the central bank (i.e. the regulators were threatening the whistleblower with prosecution, and protecting the bank, effectively) - and thereafter his career was ruined and he became unemployable:
http://whistleblowerirl.blogspot.ie/

The thing that people miss, when it comes to all sorts of fraud and wrongdoing: It is only the idiot fraudsters and lower-down folk, who directly commit crimes in a way that can imprison them - the real and extremely dangerous fraudsters, commit their crimes in an indirect way (creating 'perverse incentives' in a workplace environment instead of directly ordering crimes, using back-channel industry influence to make someone unemployable, instead of directly punishing them, etc.), a way which always provides them with complete plausible deniability, so that they are much harder to prosecute.


It is almost exactly like how a mafia/gang works, except it's more 'respectable', because it doesn't involve any direct violence, and the general public are easily fooled into thinking white collar crime is victimless - but it can actually be a few orders of magnitude more damaging to society than any gangland crime, as the economic crisis shows.

Fraudsters like these (the ones at the top) are the most dangerous criminals in all of society, in my view, and usually they have very close relations with people in power politically and in business (simply because they have a lot of money/connections, and this brings influence/power), so they hold very significant political clout (more than the general public collectively does really, at this stage, as all major political parties that end up in power, usually have very close ties with this class of people, and end up in very well paid board positions or similar gigs, after their time in government).

hatrickpatrick

Ellie2008 wrote: »

No they didn't they hid some accounts from Revenue for DIRT or other income tax purposes presumably same as the garlic importer = tax evasion, no one is accusing him of ruining the country.

Read my post above about the initial stock market collapse which ultimately led to Anglo's demise. It would appear to have been sparked by news of these hidden loans and accounts leaking to some extent.

hatrickpatrick

Ellie2008 wrote: »

The accounts they didn't report to Revenue couldn't have been loan accounts, you don't pay DIRT on debit balances obviously, they'd have to have been current or deposit accounts liable for DIRT.

The hidden loans scandal seems to date back more or less as far as the accounts which were the subject of this trial, so it's highly plausible that Seanie initiated all of these scams around the same time as part of a package conspiracy.

If it subsequently transpires that these accounts were entirely separate and had absolutely nothing to do with Seanie's hidden loans then fair enough I'm sure we'll find out a lot more when Seanie himself is in the dock in a couple of months - but to be honest I'd still hold that they formed part of the eventual collapse of the bank, as they were part of the overall culture of corruption. In my view, everyone who was remotely involved in any shady dealings inside Anglo bears some responsibility, however slight, for turning it into a "cowboy bank" and subsequently leading to the major scandals which caused its collapse.

Ellie2008

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Read my post above about the initial stock market collapse which ultimately led to Anglo's demise. It would appear to have been sparked by news of these hidden loans and accounts leaking to some extent.

News of the hidden loans yes because that would be connected to the share price, news of hidden accounts from Revenue hmm I dunno maybe, it was hardly foreseeable by these three that tax evasion would lead to the collapse of the bank.

KingBrian2

Ellie2008 wrote: »

He s been watching too much Love Hate.

I watch the same news reports as everyone here the majority of feuding in this country is perpetrated by the travelling community. The crime statistics point in one way and in particular the travellers are the most violent.

vienne86

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I was the same yesterday with these three. Like, they're people, with families and lives etc. But the fact is, they played a massive role in completely destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of Irish people, and they have to be held accountable for that.

I felt like that too yesterday, as I felt they just did what Seanie told them to do and he was the boss. But someone pointed out to me today that the IT people, who were lower again in the hierarchy, knew this was wrong and didn't carry out the order to delete the records - they archived them instead. Good for them.

take everything

Ellie2008 wrote: »

This^^^^^Im literally baffled about how they didn't sing like canaries!!!

I would imagine it's because they're a bit thick ethically. Like a lot of Irish corporate executives.

kazamo

Ellie2008 wrote: »

The accounts they didn't report to Revenue couldn't have been loan accounts, you don't pay DIRT on debit balances obviously, they'd have to have been current or deposit accounts liable for DIRT.

They could have been loan accounts.
Directors who owe any company money via a Director's Loan account at year end face a penalty from Revenue as they are effectively interest free or very low interest loans. If this is what caught him it suggests to me that the loans given to Seanie had preferential terms as if it was normal lending and repayment terms, not sure the Revenue could go after him.

donegaLroad

vienne86 wrote: »

I felt like that too yesterday, as I felt they just did what Seanie told them to do and he was the boss. But someone pointed out to me today that the IT people, who were lower again in the hierarchy, knew this was wrong and didn't carry out the order to delete the records - they archived them instead. Good for them.

pity the gardai aren't able to get the passwords for the Anglo PCs :rolleyes:

hatrickpatrick

Gangland analogy for those who insist that there's no connection between this case and the ultimate fate of Anglo:

Imagine that today, in 2015, I'm involved with a group of lads in their mid twenties who are getting involved in petty crime, and I assist them in hiding a small shipment of weed and a few guns from customs and the Gardai. Ten years later, this crew are in their mid thirties, I'm still involved with them, and bolstered by the successes of their small-fish campaigns of the mid 2010s, which I helped them cover up, they have gone on to become the most dangerous and violent heroin dealers in Dublin City.

Would it be unreasonable for someone to suggest by that facilitating their early criminal activity, I have played a role in their development into the fearsome gang they are today? That through cause and effect, regardless of intent, my helping them to hide their 2015 shipment from the Gardai led them to remain under the radar until they'd grown so powerful that they were wreaking violent havoc on the entire city ten years later?

That's essentially what we're dealing with here.

michael999999

A banker in England jailed for 14 years today, for rigging Libor rates.

Over here he would get Legal Aid and a suspended sentence!

kazamo

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It was Seanie's secret bank accounts and hidden loans which eventually caused investors to lose confidence in Anglo Irish Bank.

The "Paddy's Day Massacre", or "Black Monday", in 2008 saw Anglo lose almost all of its already depleted stock value in a single day. The cause of this was subsequently attributed to "someone spreading false rumours" about Anglo in the stock exchange on the day in question.


It was only a short time later that the first of many scandals involving Anglo - FitzPatrick's hidden loans - was revealed publicly for the first time. The Golden Circle loans, IIRC, were revealed later.

In that context, it's hard to imagine that there isn't a connection between news of the hidden loans leaking, and those "false rumours" being spread which caused Anglo's share price to plummet.

Again, one has to talk about complex "root cause" issues, which in cases like this can go back years or even decades, but I remember watching every development related to Anglo like a hawk (as one of the short-sighted shmucks who had a bunch of Anglo shares ) while all this was going on, and at the time when FitzPatrick's loans were revealed that was the "aha!" moment for a lot of people who had been wondering exactly what those alleged "false rumours" had been about.

In that context, if those loans were one of the major reasons for the collapse in Anglo's share confidence and if that was in turn one of the major excuses for issuing the blanket bank guarantee, then FitzPatrick and those who aided and abetted his behaviour should rightly be ascribed a proportion of the blame for the economic hell which followed.

Are you sure the revelations about Seanie's loans, started the stampede on the share price. From memory, I think these revelations all became knowledge after the bank guarantee in September 2008 and at that stage the shares had been falling for 15 months.

Details of what he was up to wouldn't have helped but they were more the final body blows to an already dying bank whose financial model of short term financing couldn't deal with the pessimistic view that inter bank market had after Bear Sterns and Northern Rock. The shaky loan guarantees underpinning the loan book wouldn't have helped either.

Re the rumours in March 2008, I think they were more likely to have been either about Sean Quinn's contacts for difference or fallout from Bear Sterns with the markets looking for the next likely victim, rather than an account cover up which seemed to have been ongoing for a number of years.

The blanket guarantee was needed as all banks were reckless(not just Anglo). Seanie's loans and standing were not sufficient to create a mess as big as this and if Anglo had been the only problem, the guarantee would have been called the Anglo Bank Guarantee.


I came close to buying Anglo shares also but opted for BOI instead.
Not quite a wipe out but a 96% loss as of today......and BOI were the best to survive !!!!!!!!!!!!

kazamo

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Gangland analogy for those who insist that there's no connection between this case and the ultimate fate of Anglo:

Imagine that today, in 2015, I'm involved with a group of lads in their mid twenties who are getting involved in petty crime, and I assist them in hiding a small shipment of weed and a few guns from customs and the Gardai. Ten years later, this crew are in their mid thirties, I'm still involved with them, and bolstered by the successes of their small-fish campaigns of the mid 2010s, which I helped them cover up, they have gone on to become the most dangerous and violent heroin dealers in Dublin City.

Would it be unreasonable for someone to suggest by that facilitating their early criminal activity, I have played a role in their development into the fearsome gang they are today? That through cause and effect, regardless of intent, my helping them to hide their 2015 shipment from the Gardai led them to remain under the radar until they'd grown so powerful that they were wreaking violent havoc on the entire city ten years later?

That's essentially what we're dealing with here.

Bad comparison.

Ultimate fate of Anglo was created by bad financing and reckless lending and they didn't need to test the waters of account name manipulation beforehand.

If there had been no account manipulation, the bank would have failed anyway.

When Anglo rose from a tiny bank to one similar in market capitalisation as the two pillar banks, no one in regulation wondered how it was done in such a short space of time. Took the other banks many decades.
Now linking that to the ultimate demise would make more sense.

kazamo

michael999999 wrote: »

A banker in England jailed for 14 years today, for rigging Libor rates.

Over here he would get Legal Aid and a suspended sentence!

Don't forget the full pension (topped up by the tax payer if required)

hatrickpatrick

kazamo wrote: »

Bad comparison.

Ultimate fate of Anglo was created by bad financing and reckless lending and they didn't need to test the waters of account name manipulation beforehand.

If there had been no account manipulation, the bank would have failed anyway.

When Anglo rose from a tiny bank to one similar in market capitalisation as the two pillar banks, no one in regulation wondered how it was done in such a short space of time. Took the other banks many decades.
Now linking that to the ultimate demise would make more sense.

So you're suggesting that the high level criminality and general shenanigans a the top of Anglo played no part in its demise?

hatrickpatrick

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

So you're suggesting that the high level criminality and general shenanigans a the top of Anglo played no part in its demise?

These particular shenangigans played no part in its demise. If anything, the fake bank accounts and dodgy loans were a minor encumbrance on Anglo's ability to lend more money to developers.

kazamo

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

So you're suggesting that the high level criminality and general shenanigans a the top of Anglo played no part in its demise?

Didn't say that at all so please don't try and put words in my mouth.
I am not linking last weeks court case with the billions needed to bailout all the banks which you seem keen to do.

Anglo must have been running wild for a good few years without anyone in authority even questioning them never mind imposing sanctions\penalties. So when account manipulation occurred, they probably just saw it as another thing they could do without giving it a second thought.

What I find interesting is the focus on this whereas I consider the transfer of 7.2 billion from another institution into Anglo to inflate the deposits held at quarter or year end as a much bigger issue.
Not only were Anglo involved, but so was a third party institution and I would be surprised if only a few people were aware of this.
What bothers me more is the third party went along with it and must have realised the reason behind it but said nothing.

It's part of the reason why this scapegoating of one institution is
an easy way out. All financial institutions needed a bailout, just the worst one of a bad lot was put down.
Three people are serving time atm, it should be hundreds from a mixture of all the institutions and regulatory authorities.

hatrickpatrick

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

These particular shenangigans played no part in its demise. If anything, the fake bank accounts and dodgy loans were a minor encumbrance on Anglo's ability to lend more money to developers.

We'll have to agree to disagree then I guess. In my view, every little bit of dodginess and criminality led up to a big picture of an organisation which was reckless, incompetent, corrupt and completely out of control.

hatrickpatrick

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

We'll have to agree to disagree then I guess. In my view, every little bit of dodginess and criminality led up to a big picture of an organisation which was reckless, incompetent, corrupt and completely out of control.

All of these examples of shenangigans do lead to the same big picture, that much I agree with.

But this particular shenanigan was an end in itself. Anglo would have lent too much money to the construction industry whether or not these loans existed. These loans and fake accounts were not a basis for (supposedly) reckless lending to developers.

KingBrian2

kazamo wrote: »

Re the rumours in March 2008, I think they were more likely to have been either about Sean Quinn's contacts for difference or fallout from Bear Sterns with the markets looking for the next likely victim, rather than an account cover up which seemed to have been ongoing for a number of years.

There were rumour and there were scaremongering. I remember that period very well and horror stories came from all quarters. Their was purposeful attempts to gain from the Anglo share decline. Why else would bankers seek to flee this jurisdiction to seek bankruptcy in London & New York. They knew they could evade prosecution by residing in safe havens.

conorh91

As predicted, the Circuit Court has refused an application to adjourn the trial of Seán Fitzpatrick.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/seán-fitzpatrick-s-attempt-to-adjourn-trial-denied-1.2308602

However, in his ruling on Thursday, Judge Martin Nolan declined the application pointing out that the defendant had been the subject of attention for years.

“Anybody living in this country has to be aware of the huge amount of adverse publicity that has been directed toward Sean FitzPatrick since 2008,” he said.

He believes a jury can deal with the case impartially, he said, and that Mr Fitzpatrick’s acquittal at a separate recent criminal trial underscored his confidence in this regard, in that the jury arrived at a verdict based on the facts of the case.

“Mr Fitzpatrick’s reputation is negative at this stage,” he said. “It seems to me the trial should go on.”