FitzPatrick trial will not hear evidence until the new year

THE trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick for allegedly misleading auditors about multi-million euro loans will begin in evidence in the new year, a judge has said.

The trial, which began last September when a jury was empanelled, has been significantly delayed due to legal argument overrunning.

So far it has run for over 50 days, the majority of which were taken up by legal argument. It was due to begin in evidence before the jury on Monday, December 19, but a bereavement over the weekend in the family of the trial judge, Judge John Aymler, means it will not now start until January.

Judge Pauline Codd told the jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that it should come back on January 11 before thanking the jurors for giving up their valuable time.

Mr FitzPatrick (68) of Whitshed Road, Greystones, has pleaded not guilty to 21 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and six charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007.

Last month, Dominic McGinn SC opened the case for the prosecution and told the jury that loans taken out by Mr FitzPatrick, his wife and family members increased from in the region of €10 million in 2002 to around €100 million in 2007.

The State’s case is that the amount of these loans 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 and that these loans were not disclosed to the bank’s auditors Ernst & Young, allegedly contrary to the 1990 Companies Act.

Judge John Aylmer previously told the jury, who have so far only heard a summary of the allegations, that the trial would now likely run to the end of February. He said this was the worst case scenario timeline. He told the jurors that the case is ‘overrunning to a significant extent’ because of continuing legal argument.

The trial began last September when a specially enlarged jury of 15 was empanelled over the course of two days. The jury was told then the trial would finish by Christmas.

Since then there have been weeks of legal argument in the absence of the jury and two jurors have been excused from service because of health and professional reasons.

‘We are trying to give you the worst case scenario. We’ve gone twice the time on the second [legal] issues. Nobody can be blamed. These things take their course and they can’t be rushed,’ Judge Aylmer told the jury last month.