Brendan Burgess
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Colm Keena has a superb article on the background to the prosecution of Seán Fitzpatrick in today's Irish Times
"Get Seánie’: The prosecution of Seán FitzPatrick
It has a lot in it, which I had not read elsewhere - this bit in particular:
While the nation was widely shocked to hear about the warehousing of loans by the former Anglo chairman in 2008, it quickly emerged that this was not necessarily illegal. Each year-end company directors are obliged to declare any loans they had from their company during the year. However, bank directors during the 2000s had a different obligation. They had to declare only loans they had at the year’s end.
The Anglo directors, including FitzPatrick, were asked by the bank’s auditors EY to sign documents setting out their loans from the bank.
However, the directors were mistakenly given documents using a template appropriate for “normal” company directors rather than bank directors. So they ended up signing documents that referred to loans during the year rather than at year-end.
The prosecution case against FitzPatrick included charges that he had misrepresented his position to the auditors in relation to his loans when he had signed these documents. Yet this was only because he was given the wrong type of document to sign, one that referred to loans during the year, rather than at year’s-end.
According to Judge Aylmer, the use by the auditors of the wrong template was regarded by the ODCE as “fortuitous in the context of their endeavours to build a case of misrepresentation”.
"Get Seánie’: The prosecution of Seán FitzPatrick
It has a lot in it, which I had not read elsewhere - this bit in particular:
While the nation was widely shocked to hear about the warehousing of loans by the former Anglo chairman in 2008, it quickly emerged that this was not necessarily illegal. Each year-end company directors are obliged to declare any loans they had from their company during the year. However, bank directors during the 2000s had a different obligation. They had to declare only loans they had at the year’s end.
The Anglo directors, including FitzPatrick, were asked by the bank’s auditors EY to sign documents setting out their loans from the bank.
However, the directors were mistakenly given documents using a template appropriate for “normal” company directors rather than bank directors. So they ended up signing documents that referred to loans during the year rather than at year-end.
The prosecution case against FitzPatrick included charges that he had misrepresented his position to the auditors in relation to his loans when he had signed these documents. Yet this was only because he was given the wrong type of document to sign, one that referred to loans during the year, rather than at year’s-end.
According to Judge Aylmer, the use by the auditors of the wrong template was regarded by the ODCE as “fortuitous in the context of their endeavours to build a case of misrepresentation”.