‘Get him to sign beer mat’
A FORMER Anglo Irish Bank executive said he planned to ‘get a bit of drink’ into a banker he knew and ask him for ‘five billion’, a court heard.
In response to Matt Moran’s comments, his Anglo colleague John Bowe suggested they could ‘get him to sign the beer mat’, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.
A FORMER Anglo Irish Bank boss said he planned to ‘get a bit of drink’ into a Credit Suisse banker at an upcoming dinner and say to him: ‘I’d like about five billion before the 30th.’
Matt Moran, who was chief financial officer at Anglo, was giving evidence during the trial of the bank’s former chief executive David Drumm for conspiracy to defraud.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday heard an extract from a recorded phone call between Mr Moran and John Bowe, former Anglo head of capital markets.
The phone call was on September 22, 2008, eight days before Anglo’s year-end accounts were due to be published. The two discussed what might be said to Credit Suisse banker Ewen Stevenson at an upcoming dinner.
Mr Moran told Mr Bowe: ‘Look, if I can get a bit of drink into him, I might say to him, I’d like about five billion before the 30th.’
Mr Bowe suggested they could ‘get him to sign the beer mat’, and asked if Mr Stevenson might be prepared to ‘give us a little kind of one night stand’.
‘Well I’m going to if I can promise him there’ll be no f ****** STD out of it,’ Mr Moran replied.
To sound of laughter from both, Mr Bowe remarked: ‘It’s sort of the cherry on the cake, plus a bit of the cake as well. The f ****** tin, as well as the bloody oven.’
Mr Moran said: ‘It’s two f ****** layers.’
Mr Bowe then suggested that Credit Suisse are told Anglo will do a deal with them ‘on the capital side’, and said Anglo will place money with them.
The court heard Mr Moran asked if the transaction involves ‘one set of cash’. Mr Bowe replied: ‘Yeah, you don’t need the physical cash.’ He said Anglo would give Credit Suisse eligible assets or cash and ‘just run the cash in one door and out the other’.
Mr Moran asked if Anglo had the requisite cash to fund such a transaction. Mr Bowe said: ‘What we do is we pay them and they pay us, do you know what I mean, yeah?’
Mary Rose Gearty SC, prosecuting, told the jury all calls on Mr Bowe’s phone line were recorded by the bank as matter of course.
She asked Mr Moran if the banker referred to in the recorded conversation was Mr Stevenson of Credit Suisse. Mr Moran said it was and said he knew him.
Ms Gearty asked if the transaction with Credit Suisse, discussed in the call, had taken place. ‘No, it didn’t,’ Mr Moran said.
Mr Drumm, 51, from Skerries, Co. Dublin, denies conspiring to defraud and false accounting.
The trial continues.
‘Give us a little one night stand’