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Updated 6.35pm
A JUDGE HAS ordered that former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick be found not guilty of hiding millions of euro in loans from auditors.
On day 126 of the State’s longest running criminal trial, Judge John Aylmer said that there was a real risk that the former bank executive would be denied his constitutional right to a fair trial.
He said this resulted from alarming flaws in the prosecution.
The judge said that he intended to direct the jury to acquit FitzPatrick (68) of Whitshed Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow of all remaining charges.
His ruling was made in the absence of the jury, which returns to court tomorrow.
The prosecution alleged that amount of loans connected to FitzPatrick was artificially reduced for a period of two weeks around the bank’s financial end of year statement by short term loans from other sources, including Irish Nationwide Building Society.
Described as “refinancing” this practice was also known as “bed-and-breakfasting” or “warehousing”, as the loans would be allegedly put into short term storage.
During legal argument, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard there was nothing illegal about the loans arrangement.
The State alleged that the former director was obliged to disclose the full extent of his loans to the bank’s auditors Ernst & Young and instead he had concealed them.
After his arrest in 2010 FitzPatrick denied to investigating gardaí from the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation that he had ever sought to conceal the multi-million euro loans.
He told detectives that there was no financial benefit to him, his family or the bank in the annual refinancing of some of his loans.
Speaking outside of court after the ruling FitzPatrick said it had been a long, tiring and difficult time for him and his family. He said that thankfully the trial was over now and it was a wonderful day for him and his family.
Judge Aylmer had said that the investigation, carried out by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), fell short of an unbiased, impartial and balanced investigation that an accused is entitled to.
He said this was because the lead investigator for the ODCE, Kevin O’Connell was inexperienced and made fundamental mistakes.
He said the ODCE investigation failed to seek out evidence as to the innocence as well as the guilt of the accused. He said the ODCE adopted an inappropriate, biased and partisan approach and were trying to build a case rather than investigating a case impartially.
Much of the case rested on “letters of representation” signed by each Anglo directors during the audit and the judge ruled that this issue was not properly investigated.
He said the most fundamental error was the way in which the ODCE set about taking statements from witnesses.
He said this involved coaching of witnesses, contamination of their statements from third parties such as solicitors for the auditors and cross-contamination between witness statements.
He said warnings to the jury would be inadequate to address these flaws.
Judge Aylmer also pointed to the extraordinary destruction of documents linked to the investigation by the lead investigator. This happened during legal argument in the first trial in May 2015 and emerged during that trial.
The judge said there must be a concern that the shredded documents were of assistance to the defence and damaging to the prosecution.
The retrial of FitzPatrick began last September. It was scheduled to last three months but quickly became bogged down in weeks of legal argument in the absence of the jury.
FitzPatrick had pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act. These include 22 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and five charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007. The DPP withdrew nine of these charges earlier this month.
The prosecution came on foot of an investigation by the ODCE that began shortly after the full size of FitzPatrick’s personal loans emerged in December 2008.
Between 2002 and 2007 loans taken out by FitzPatrick, his wife and family members increased from in the region of €10 million in 2002 to around €100 million in 2007. The revelations led to FitzPatrick resigning as chairman.
The loans were used to finance development of shopping centres, hotels and offices at a time when a lot of money could be made in property development, the jury were told at the start of the trial.
I wouldnt dare complain about my working hours. Im lucky to have job! Many of my friends and family are not so lucky…
God I wish people would grown some spine. ‘You wouldn’t dare complain about your working hour’s – that’s pretty pathetic really that you would let an employer exploit you out of gratitude to have a job. Everyone has a right to decent work where employers stick to the rules and to basic principles like an 8 hour day and a 40 hour week that were hard fought for in the early 20th century. Attitudes like yours allow employers to drive down conditions (and wages) for everybody. Do we really want to go back to a six or seven day week and working every waking hour? Because that’s the way the mainstream discourse is headed at the moment.
30 mins extra will “have a negative impact on their home and personal lives.” Are they joking? So I work the same amount of hours as a high paid parliment memeber yet get paid not even half of what they get, and i dont complain about being made work extra hours… they should be ashamed
You’re the one who should be ashamed for not complaining! Sick of this ‘everybody should be miserable’ thing. Nobody should have to work more than 35 hours a week max. There’s more to life than work, we all only live once.
I say this as someone who has been working well over 50 hours a week for the last six months, which I have zero intention of keeping up long term. Apart from anything else it’s seriously bad for your mental and physical health and you become a really boring person with no life!
I should be complaining? I’m damn lucky to have a job, so I will do whatever hours they tell me.
I’m with you Mike!
Mike, not disagreeing with you, but it is sad that people feel they are lucky to have an employer to enrich. We have gone back to the days of Dickens.
If this recession has shown us anything it’s that there is no such thing as loyalty were employers are concerned. If you’re the wrong side of 50 when the next recession hits (and there’ll always be another recession) all these extra hours you are doing now will be a long forgotten memory and you’ll be out on your ear.
1. It’s the staff, not the parliamentarians.
2. I’d rather spend that extra 30 minutes with my family if I’m not getting paid to be there and I know who will benefit from it more in long run.
For most people, NOT taking the extra half an hour at work would have a negative impact on their home and personal lives.
I work for myself and work from home. It depends on the week. But a minimum of 35 hours/week is what I work, but usually it’s more like 45-50 hours per week. These guys should consider themselves lucky and should quit complaining. There are many who’d give anything to work the hours they are being asked to do.
Social Care workers work a 39 hour waking week but they are also obliged to do two (8 hour) sleepovers – during which they might or might not sleep – depending on the clients in their care. It amounts to a 55 hour week away from home. Sleepovers are paid at the rate of about 40 per sleepover before tax – about 25 euro after tax. It would be more profitable to babysit for the neighbours!!
So train to be a nurse. Do the same kind of work. 37.5 hour week. No sleep-overs. Higher hourly rate. Work-life balance…
A nurse? My daughter’s a nurse, 4 years to train, no pay and where do you intend to get a job at the end of it, work as an agency nurse forever? With no permanent employer you can get no mortgage, loans etc. If you somehow did get a job in a hospital you’d be earning less than everyone else (new rules), I’m a cleaner in a hospital and earn more than nurses,and trust me my wages isn’t anything to shake a stick at, how can that be right?
I’m fed up with people saying “I’m lucky to have a job”, while I understand the sentiment, what they actually mean is they feel lucky to have a wage in the current climate, in reality the employer is damn lucky to have them.
Sorry to hear your daughter’s in that position. I’m a staff nurse. €50k a year (incl. shift allowances). Permanent, pensionable non-HSE employment…
@fleetingwhim. What planet are you after being dropped from. You have to pay to play. 35 hours? Have you ever worked for a living? There’s a real world out there waiting for you to inhabit. Otherwise there’s always the (un)Civil Service.
Your man fleeting whim is dead right. It would be better to make more jobs available to the unemployed rather than increase hours of the employed. More to life than work. Feel the fear and tell them to feck off I say!
being self employed I often work 60 hours a week, It’s Nora problem, just a necessary sacrifice of time at the moment. if I did work for someone else and that business was suffering, I don’t think I’d have a problem working longer hours, so long as it was to keep the business afloat and my job intact, not to line the pockets of my employer.
Clock watchers never get to the top !
Looking at the mess those at the top have made of the country, the banks and lots of businesses it would be better if they did. If you spend too many hours working you can’t be at the top of your game.
@richard, it’s not just the ‘lads at the to’, we’re all to blame for the blind greed that swept across this nation & the EU. From the Institutions & governments to the government artists & sponges, we’re all to blame for this mess. the question one must ask in life is ‘how much do I want to play the system to work for and with me to achieve my objectives in life?’
It is only those whose jobs are never in danger that refuse to accept work changes.
If you work for yourself then you will probably do more hours. My own weeks are generally 50+ but generally closer to 60 hours a week. As said its what you have to do to keep the place afloat.
Minimum of 60 hours a week. But mostly between 70-80 hours a week for the past 2 years.
Then you’re some eejit. There’s no pockets in a shroud, no one on their deathbed says "I wish I spent more time at work" etc etc
You’ve only one life, why would you waste your best years working?
Final cliche; work to live not live to work
@Sham McSham – what if you like your job, are self-employed, or even need to work those long hours to pay the bills?
37-38 hrs a week unpaid.
Shame on you Sham for your attitude, I work 15 hrs a day 7 days a week, if I am lucky, as sometimes it could be up to 20hrs a day…. why ? because I am a so called carer to my husband who is bed-ridden or in a wheelchair, and for what…230 euro a week, tell me I am an eegit , I cannot go on strike, I cannot give up my ” job ” and the government knows most carers can do nothing about it. You tell me how I can get out of this with-out leaving my husband or having him put in care “a home”.
A lot of people who work outside the home for 35 hours or more don’t go home and sit on their backsides all night. Most of them spend their "free time" taking care of their families too. I appreciate your job is about as outwardly thankless a job that there is but don’t feel you’re alone.
I don’t mind working longer but would like to get thanks (or even money) for it.
I’m supposed to work 41.5 hrs per week but generally work 50-52hrs.
Pity there are so any negative comments and subservience to the exploiting classes! Don’t thank the owners of industry or the government for your job as if they were doing you a huge favour – rather they should be thanking us for the quality of staff they have!
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