Fraud Police move into Anglo Irish Bank

[David Guyatt]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7907926.stm

Fraud search at Anglo Irish Bank



Fraud investigators and police are searching the headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank in Dublin.

The Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement, a company watchdog, was leading the search after a judge issued a warrant on Monday, Irish police said.

Garda and fraud investigation bureau staff are also present.

They said they were searching for books and documents which could provide evidence relating to suspected offences under the Companies Act.

The Irish government nationalised Anglo Irish Bank in January amid fears it would collapse.

Its share price had plummeted amid a wave of controversies.

In December the bank's chairman, Sean Fitzpatrick, resigned after admitting that he had transferred millions of euros out of the Dublin-based bank's accounts.

Chief executive David Drumm announced his resignation shortly afterwards.

[Magda Hassan]

[URL="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-24/anglo-irish-picked-bailout-number-out-my-arse-force-shared-taxpayer-sacrifice"]Anglo-Irish Picked Bailout Number "Out Of My Arse" To Force Shared Taxpayer Sacrifice
[/URL]


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/24/2013 - 09:23The Irish people, who sacrificed their sovereignty and billions of Euros, are waking this morning to a stunning revelation that the bailout to save Anglo-Irish was engineered by the Bank's leadership to game as much money as possible from the central bank. The Irish Independent has secret recordings from the period in 2008 - below - that show senior management luring the State into giving it billions as they admit the EUR 7 billion number was "picked out of my arse." The bottom-line is that the bank knew they were in trouble and so decided to game the Central Bank and their regulators knowing that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop: "If they (Central Bank) saw the enormity of it up front, they might decide they have a choice. You know what I mean? They might say the cost to the taxpayer is too high . . . if it doesn't look too big at the outset... if it looks big, big enough to be important, but not too big that it kind of spoils everything, then, then I think you have a chance. So I think it can creep up... [once] they have skin in the game." Will there be an Irish Spring as the conspiracy theory of the banking bailout now become conspiracy fact?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-24...-sacrifice

[Magda Hassan]

Inside Anglo: the secret recordings

Exclusive: Tapes reveal the lies and deception that led to the bank bailout

[URL="http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/inside-anglo-the-secret-recordings-29366837.html"]Link to recordings here
[/URL]

PAUL WILLIAMS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 24 JUNE 2013
TAPE RECORDINGS from inside doomed Anglo Irish Bank reveal for the first time how the bank's top executives lied to the Government about the true extent of losses at the institution.

The astonishing tapes show senior manager John Bowe, who had been involved in negotiations with the Central Bank, laughing and joking as he tells another senior manager, Peter Fitzgerald, how Anglo was luring the State into giving it billions of euro.
Mr Fitzgerald had not been involved in the negotiations with the Central Bank and has confirmed he was unaware of any strategy or intention to mislead the authorities. Mr Bowe, in a statement last night, categorically denied that he had misled the Central Bank.
The audio recordings are from the bank's own internal telephone system and date from the heart of the financial crisis that brought the State to its knees in September 2008.
Anglo itself was within days of complete meltdown and in the years ahead would eat up €30bn of taxpayer money. Mr Bowe speaks about how the State had been asked for €7bn to bail out Anglo but Anglo's negotiators knew all along this was not enough to save the bank.
The plan was that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop.
Mr Bowe is asked by Mr Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: "Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drumm) would say, 'picked it out of my arse'."






He also says: "If they (Central Bank) saw the enormity of it up front, they might decide they have a choice. You know what I mean?
"They might say the cost to the taxpayer is too high . . . if it doesn't look too big at the outset . . . if it looks big, big enough to be important, but not too big that it kind of spoils everything, then, then I think you have a chance. So I think it can creep up."
Mr Fitzgerald, the Director of Retail Banking, is heard saying: "Yeah. They've got skin in the game and that is the key."


Mr Bowe's comments in the audio recording reveal that Anglo's strategy was to lure the State in, leaving taxpayers with no choice but to continue to provide loans to "support their money".
The recording also shows Mr Bowe and Mr Fitzgerald laughing as they say how there is no realistic chance of ever repaying the loans.
For the first time, taxpayers get an exclusive insight into the banking shenanigans that cost Ireland our sovereignty.
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish...66837.html

[Jan Klimkowski]

Why are people not out in the streets saying:

We're done, the social contract is broken.

Our life savings were stolen, our homes repossessed, our children have no jobs and have left the country. And for what?

To protect some contemptible lying white collar criminals, and some politicians bought and owned by the 0.1 percent of the population who consider themselves superior.

Untouchable.

[Magda Hassan]

I ask myself the same questions Jan. It is outrageous. Where is the rage?

Why are people not out in the streets saying:

We're done, the social contract is broken.

Our life savings were stolen, our homes repossessed, our children have no jobs and have left the country. And for what?

To protect some contemptible lying white collar criminals, and some politicians bought and owned by the 0.1 percent of the population who consider themselves superior.

Untouchable.

[Jim Hackett II]

Dissipated by the psyops and the MSM.
Where is the rage? is a question I asked a bunch in '75.
A President unelected only selected (another GOP precedent)
And Nelson Rockefeller as the Selected Vice President.
Both offices unelected at the same time and running for Election?!?!
Spook City baby.

I gave up on organizing after watching a group become effective and immediately be penetrated by provocateurs, become divided into less effective small factions and last be dissipated into weekly pity parties. All in the pre-UNpatriot Act 1990s.

In 1975 too many activists went disco dancing?
I could not believe nobody gave a shit any more.
It will always be a mystery to me what happened on the home front from '72 to '75.

Watching in silence as the Church Committee and the Pike Investigation and the HSCA vividly exposed the fact that even after the SE Asian Games and Watergate debacles - all was still under the control of assholes ordering Dick Helms to shed Angleton and so forth.

America choose the Leave it to Beaver Ostrich head in sand pose over the New Frontier and went back to sleep.
By doing so the Americans empowered RReagan with Meese and Casey and Cheney and Rumsfeld still in GOP tow.
Spook township an exploding population of spectres.

Some folks are waking up though.
I hope the hell so.
Jim

[Magda Hassan]

Context

[TABLE]
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[TD]BUSTED: Bankers Caught On Tape, Joking About Bailout, And How They'd Never Pay It Back Business Insider[/TD]
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Bio

William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.
Transcript

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore. And welcome to this latest edition of The Black Financial and Fraud Report.Now joining us is Bill Black. He's an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He's a white-collar criminologist and former financial regulator, author ofThe Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One, and a regular contributor to The Real News.Thank you for joining us, Bill.BILL BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC: Thank you.NOOR: So, Bill, what do you have for us this week?BLACK: I have Ireland, all of Ireland summed up in a few snippets of tape recordings that have emerged, in which the top executives of a bank called Anglo Irish, whose frauds drove the Irish financial crisis, have finally been revealed--of course not by investigators for the government, who are busy not even knowing these tapes existed, supposedly, for four years, but because the media has finally started releasing these tapes.And the wonderful thing about bankers when they're being taped--and mind you, they know they're being taped--is they sound just like other crooks. So in particular this has to do with the collapse of Anglo Irish when they knew they were massively insolvent. But, of course, they wanted to continue to be able to get paid for their jobs. And so they went for a bailout from the Irish government. And the Irish government was so close to the banks and Irish regulation had become so pathetic that the Irish government actually believed Anglo Irish when it said there are no real problems at the bank, it's all a misunderstanding, but there's a run on the bank, and so you need to step in and you need to give us an unlimited financial guarantee of the Irish government for all of our debts, whatever they might be, no matter how big they might be, and you need to do it without ever looking. And the Irish government said, sure, let's do that.Now, that was significantly insane, but the tapes show something about how these negotiations (andnegotiations should be in quotation marks) went on. So you've got the Anglo Irish executives, and their plot is: we need a number big enough that it's scary about how much of a public bailout we need, but not so big that it'll be obvious that it would be insane to bail us out. So they came up with a number in the EUR 7-10 billion--so that's, you know, more like, at that time, $16-17 billion to put in initially, with, again, no due diligence and no understanding of the fact that--how big a cesspool Anglo Irish was. And one of the Anglo Irish Bank execs is asking the other, where'd you come up with this number? And he says, well, I followed the policy of our CEO and I just pulled it out of our arse. Right? So that's the level.And then it says they get mad with the government, because the government starts thinking that maybe it should do due diligence before it puts an absolutely unlimited guarantee out after the 15 billion, 16 billion, roughly, in U.S. dollars. And, mind you, the Anglo Irish folks had said once they give us the first slug of money, they'll be politically trapped, because they won't want to admit to their constituents that it's all money down the drain, and so they'll continue to support us once we get them hooked on supporting. So in the second group of tapes they're discussing how they're going to send people down to the central bank and demand their moolah, and they're laughing and joking about how EUR 1 billion are flowing out of the institution every day.And then, once they get that bailout from the Irish, they go, and it becomes obvious that Ireland can't possibly pay this guarantee, because Anglo Irish and the other fraudulent Irish banks are so big and their losses are so massive that they're not simply going to bankrupt the banks, every large bank in Ireland; they're going to bankrupt the whole nation, because they've done this guarantee. And they start thinking, well, who are we really protecting with this guarantee? And the answer in large part was foreign predators like German banks. So the Irish decide that there's only one answer. They're either going to default or they need a bailout by the European Union. So they go to the European Union. And this really amuses the Anglo Irish executives, who are laughing and laughing about it, and then starting to sing in the background Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, the first verses that you never sing anymore of the German national anthem before World War II because it's really politically incorrect type anthem and such. So now the Germans are outraged that all of this has come out.But as I say, the government has--Irish government, which is supposedly pursuing a vigorous investigation, of course is doing nothing of the kind. The CEO has fled Ireland and is hiding out in America, of all places. And the investigation was so pathetic that they either didn't know for four years that they had these tapes, or when they listened to them thought, well, you know, who cares type of thing.So we now have a massive political scandal in Ireland, which has become a political fight in Ireland between two of the leading parties, and we have an international scandal in which Angela Merkel, the head of Germany, purports to be outraged and talks about how these Irish bankers are operating like cynical Übermensch--supermen in other words.So everything that she thought was true about bankers has been confirmed about the top bankers in their own words, and you can go to--our viewers can go to The Irish Independent, which has been breaking these tapes and has a series of these, and you can read the keywords, but you can also listen to the tapes yourself. And if you love those, I must tell you you should go back and listen to the tapes of Enron and the other energy traders when they were creating the California energy crisis, because they too knew they were being taped when they said these amazingly outrageous things. So, of course, I'll leave you with a thought. If that's what they're willing to say when they know they're being taped, imagine what they say when they know they're not being tape recorded.NOOR: Thank you so much, Bill. I will link to both of those websites.BLACK: Thank you.NOOR: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.End
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?opti...ival=10405

[Magda Hassan]

Whistleblowing and Immunity in Ireland

by Golem XIV on SEPTEMBER 24, 2013 in LATEST
Immunity from Prosecution is an slightly odd concept but nowhere is it so odd as it is in Ireland it would seem.
A Prosecution service (such as a Director of Public Prosecution) will occassionally grant Immunity to someone so they can testify against others without what they say being used to implicate themselves in wrong-doing. The idea is generally to use a small fish to catch a larger one.
The only other kind of immunity I know of is that granted' by those who are about to be testified against. It usually involves something terminal such a car crash ( Karen Silkwood , Michael Hastings, Paul White: All whistleblowers all died in car crashes), being beaten to death in police custody (Sergei Magnitsky) , unaccountably dropping down dead (Alexander Perepilichnyy - A Magnitsky case Whistleblower) or a simple bullet to the head (Yves Coulon Agip Affair). These are very effective but slightly drastic and can attract unwanted attention,
The Irish it seems may have invented a third possibly better kind. It's called the Immunity-so-you-don't-ever-have-to-testify against anyone.
Back in 2008 Mr Matt Moran was the Chief Financial Officer at Anglo Irish Bank. He was, therefore, intimately involved in all aspects of the debacle that was and still is Anglo. His various florrid opinions on the parlous state of Anglo's finances prior to its implosion, how the wealthy of Ireland were removing their money from the bank and from Ireland, and sending it abroad, his considered opinion of Mr Seán Quinn (Ireland's most notoious property tycoon and sometime Anglo investor and customer) and how, with just a bit of drink and a beer mat he could get 5 billion euros out of a British fund manager, are all available to hear in the Anglo tapes or read exceprts from here.
Mr Moran is in some ways the kind of witness for whom immunity was invented he certainly would know who did what and when.
No surprise then that the Irish DPP granted Mr Moran immunity. But the Irish DPP appears to have taken a novel approach. It turns out the Immunity was granted two years ago though no one at the time was told. The information only came to light when the Irish Times revealed it in September 2013. Why it came to light then I shall come back to.
But what is a little odd is that during that whole two years, no prosecution starring Mr Moran has taken place. No date set, as far as I know for any trial of former Anglo CEO and Mr Moran's boss, Mr David Drumm. The only trial with a start date is that of

,,, former Anglo directors and executives Seán FitzPatrick, Willie McAteer and Pat Whelan for providing unlawful financial assistance to 16 individuals 10 long-standing customers of the bank and six members of Seán Quinn's family to buy shares in the bank is scheduled to begin in January.

This would be a trial looking at illegal share manipulation only. Unless the charges were widened, which I doubt will happen, this trial would very carefully avoid looking at any issues of reckless lending, materially misleading clients and regulators as to the real value of assets, of securities or the real nature of collateral accepted for loans granted and most importantly, would avoid any issue lifting the lid on improper dealings between the banks officers and the government of the day such as may have happened in the sale of Anglo's Austrian subsidiary to Private Austrian bank Valartis. In other words it would be a show trial.
So far all the Irish people have been given by way of justice is a couple of Micky O'Mouse white-wash inquiries which found nothing wrong. And bear in mind that as far back as 2009 when Mr Lenihan the then finance Minister was shedding crocodile tears and expressing his "frustration" at the delays it was already being pointed out,

…that the scandals at the now-nationalised Anglo Irish Bank emerged at the same time as crooked financier Bernie Madoff was arrested in New York. Madoff has since been jailed for 150 years while not one Irish prosecution has reached the courts.

Funny that.
In the mean time Mr Moran long ago left Anglo and is now handsomely employed at Lombard International Assurance in Luxembourg.
Such a long absense of any prosecution not even so far as we know any depostion from Mr Moran looks to me rather like an immunity granted as a reward for NOT testifying.
It is especially perplexing when you look at what Irish Law says about Immunity. These quotes are taken from the law regarding Immunity in relation to Cartels as laid down in the Competition Acts of 1991 and 1996 . I have used this document simply because it is available, I don't know under what particular act Mr Moran's Immunity was granted, but I doubt it makes any difference because generally Immunity is the same no matter which particular law it was granted under. If I am wrong about this I would be grateful for a lawyer to correct me.
In the section which details the requirements for being considered for immunity Irish law says in pargraph 13 the applicant must have "…terminated its participation in the illegal activity". Mr Moran left Anglo and the bank iself is no more, so presumably he's OK on that one.
Paragraph 15 looks more difficult:

15 The applicant… must not have coerced another party to participate in the illegal activity and must not have acted as the instigator or have played the lead role in the illegal activity. The applicant must be able to show this to the satisfaction of the Authority.

So given that Mr Moran has been granted immunity are we to take it that the DPP is quite confident, having looked in to it in detail, that Mr Moran was not the instigator of any illegal activity', didn't play a lead role in any and did not coerce others? And all this while he was number two at the bank? Wow!
That means Mr Drumm must have either acted alone or coerced Mr Moran and all those below him. Ladies and gentleman are we going to see the world's first Rogue CEO? Will we find Drumm was a KGB agent, spent time in Cuba and was a loner with deep psychological problems? I can hardly wait. Though I suspect I may have to.
But back to poor used, abused and thoroughly innocent Mr Moran. Let's look at what Mr Moran would have been required to provide in return for his immunity and a free pass out of Ireland to pastures green in Luxembourg.
Section 16 says,

16 Throughout the course of the Authority's investigation and any subsequent prosecution, the applicant must provide complete and timely co-operation. In particular, the applicant must:
a) Reveal any and all offences … in which it may have been involved;
b) Provide full, frank and truthful disclosure of all the evidence and information known or available to it or under its control, including all documentary and other records, wherever located, relating to the offences under investigation with no misrepresentation of any material facts; and
c) Co-operate fully, on a continuing basis, expeditiously and at its own expense throughout the investigation and with any ensuing prosecutions.

Let me remind you this is all from the Competition Acts but as I said the detail of immunity is unlikely to be very different in any other act. I just want you to be aware.
But taking this law as a likely indicator of the law under which Mr Moran was dealt with, it would seem that the DPP must already have details of all offences Mr Moran was aware of, all the documents and records necessary to detail and prove those offences and a full and frank disclosure of everything he knew about what went on at Anglo. Remember he was number two in the bank.
If the DPP does not have all this, then on what basis was Mr Moran given immunity from the law? If the DPP does have all this and must have had it all for several YEARS already, then what kind of bumbling half wits or conniving lick-spittles run the place that they still haven't done a thing with it all?
The whole idea of Immunity is to use a small fish to catch a larger one. Mr Moran however was the number two at Anglo. As the Chief Financial Officer he really only reported to one man above him, the CEO, Mr David Drumm. Both of them would have been technically answerable to the board, but the dysfunction or rather non-functioning of Anglo's board is now common knowledge. Thus by granting Immunity to Mr Moran the DPP has contrived to put one of the two TOP architects of the entire Anglo catastrophe forever beyond the reach of justice and the law. (It remains to be seen if Mr Moran was granted partial or complete Immunity. Partial means he can't be prosecuted using his own testimony or evidence gained because of it. But he could be prosectured if other independently acquired evidence came to light. Complete Immunity means just that. Both are common in the U.S.A but have rarely been granted in Ireland.)
Whichever turns out to be the case for Mr Moran, what remains unchanged is that, if he ever is called to testify, most of those he could implicate will be junior to him. The lovely Sean FitzPatrick is so far only on trail for share price manipulation.
It is unusual, to say the least, to grant immunity to the largest suspect in order to help secure evidence against lesser suspects. Was there no one, not one person, lower down the food chain at Anglo who would have gladly accepted Immunity and testified against the two top suspects? Personally I find that hard to believe.
Which brings us back to wondering why was Mr Moran given immunity and why are we learning about it now?
A few weeks ago The Village Magazine wrote an open letter to the Irish DPP saying if no case was brought against UniCredit various other banks and a rogues gallery of neer-do-well bankers then the Village would. I wonder if the Village is going to make good on this threat? I do sincerely hope so.
It is interesting however that it is after the threat was made that we find out about Mr Moran and, as the web site "Public Inquiry" notes, that the DDP, Claire Loftus seems to have fired a warning shot at The Village, its owner Michael Smith and the UniCredit whistleblower Mr Sugarman.
In the preface to the DPP annual report Ms Loftus wrote,

I want to take this opportunity to say something generally about the risks of pre-trial publicity interfering with the right of an accused person to a fair trial.
The media and commentators have a high degree of responsibility to ensure that not only do they not commit a contempt of court by publishing or broadcasting prejudicial material but also that such publicity is not the cause of a trial being postponed for a long period, or even indefinitely.
These risks increase as any trial date approaches.

As Public Inquiry then asked,

Could it be that her warning is aimed at the editor of Village magazine, Michael Smith, who issued the … challenge to Ms. Loftus and her office in the August/September issue?

A warning from the Irish DPP not to say or write anything that might prejudice a future prosecution after so many years when even Madoff has already been goaled seems to be taking the piss. What are we all to wait for, the next Ice Age?! I have seen glaciers melt and mountain ranges erode faster than justice moves in ireland. It is even slower than it is in England and THAT is saying something.
The Irish authorities seized two MILLION documents from Anglo. They have had several very senior bankers trawling through the debris making sense of it all sufficient to wind it up. There are people who can piece together a great deal of who did what and when including the involvement of senior political figures. U.S. Vulture funds connected with Elliott Associates have recently made it clear they think such documents exist and have gone to court to be allowed to find them.
Other documents relating the the infamous sale of Anglo's Austrian subsidiary to the private bank Valartis, using money lent to Valartis by Anglo! which spirited away hundreds of millions from any possible bail-in which would confiscated those millions, and also protected the identity of the owners of those millions from curious Irish eyes, plus the connection of that sale to a knot of allegations of high level corruption among the political elite of Austria there are anwers to all these questions in the documents at Anglo, at Dame Street and in the heads of the who worked at Anglo. To give any of them immunity and then never get round to making them testify is … what?
An immunity from prosecution is given when a proscutor wants to strike a deal with a witness so they can speak freely and in so doing bring about larger prosecutions. But if an immunity is given and no prosecution ever results then what is it? What was it given for really?
I would argue is is a kind of silk gag. The person doesn't have to say a word they've been given immunity. They are free to get on with life knowing they are not going to face prosecution. It amounts to a seal on everything they know.
The warning from the DPP about not prejudicing is a sad joke. One that reveals what justice is about in Ireland.
Bear in mind one last thing. Mr Moran never stood up and said, ask me, I know who the guilty people are, I know what they did.' Yet two years ago he was quietly given immunity and he has said not a word, not a murmur of a deposition since. Mr Jonathan Sugarman did stand up and say, help me please I know of wrong doing at the bank where I hold a senior position.' He went to the regulator and asked for help. He told them in a letter what his conerns were. He got others to independently verify his concerns.
He was ignored. He approached senior people in every Irish political party. They ignored him took, no action and some even tried to deny they had ever heard of him.
He was not offered Immunity. He was threatened with prosecution if he revealed what he knew.
Compare Mr Moran's and Mr Sugarman's treatment and you tell me what being granted Immunity looks like it's for.
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2013/09/whiste...n-ireland/