WHO’S LAUGHING NOW, DRUMMER?
Jurors ask for Anglo tapes again, before convicting foul-mouthed banker who laughed at the efforts to save Irish banks in 2008
EX-Anglo boss David Drumm finally faces justice after a jury heard his foul-mouthed mockery of taxpayer attempts to save the bank.
Ten years after the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank and economic meltdown, Drumm looked unmoved yesterday when found guilty of a €7.2billion fraud. The fate of the fraudster – who jeered and laughed at government efforts to rescue the bank – was
most likely sealed less than one hour into the jury’s ten hours of deliberating.
Just 50 minutes after being sent to the jury room jurors sought to hear again a tape in which Drumm denounces the Central Bank as ‘those f***ing shower of clowns down in Dame Street’, and sneeringly described the Financial Regulator as ‘F***ing Freddie F***ing Fly’.
The tapes are recorded phone calls between Drumm and Anglo’s treasury director John Bowe, at a time when the government was committing billions of euro to shoring up the bank.
In one astonishing section, Bowe says Anglo is in a hole and Drumm responds that they are ‘f **** ed’. He then asks: ‘And who was in charge when that was going on?’, which is followed by laughter from the two men. On top of this, unknown to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and others scrambling to save the bank, Anglo was in a far worse financial state than Drumm was letting on.
Even as he was sneering at the State, Drumm was organising to get €7.2billion from Irish Life & Permanent, which he would let sit in Anglo’s account, and then send back to Irish Life as soon as Anglo’s annual results were published.
It was a giant fraud to hide the shocking truth, that customers were taking their money out as fast as possible, sensing its collapse was just weeks away. The crisis was so bad that some customers put their money in holdalls and carried it from Anglo to the airport to put it banks in London.
Drumm’s solution would fraudulently make it look like money was flowing into Anglo, not out – but he needed others to help pull off the audacious fraud.
His ex-colleagues Bowe, the bank’s former
‘What’s this about having to do due diligence?’
director of finance Willie McAteer; and former chief executive Denis Casey, all agreed to help out.
Arranging for Irish Life to give him the €7.2billion was Drumm’s last, desperate attempt to lie to shareholders, customers, the government and the public and pretend there was no run on the bank and that customers were sticking with Anglo.
It was clumsily done. Only £1billion in sterling moved between the two organisations. It moved back and forth until it looked like an additional €7.2billion had been lodged into Anglo. It worked as long as nobody looked at the same amounts moving right back to Irish Life.
At one point on the tapes, made in late 2008, the jury heard Drumm muse that it would be easier to simply make up the figures rather than keep up the charade with Irish Life. In one section from October, Drumm laughs out loud as Bowe sings Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles, as German unease about the flow of deposits into Anglo’s accounts mounted.
‘F***ing ridiculous, John,’ says Drumm, before Mr Bowe mockingly breaks into the lyrics many Germans now find offensive.
On December 3, 2018, Drumm brazenly published the false deposit figures in the 2008 annual accounts, having assured the government and financial regulators the situation was under control. But investors didn’t believe him and the annual accounts only hastened the end. Within weeks Anglo collapsed and its shares were delisted.
On December 15, less than two weeks after Drumm published the fraudulent accounts, he told Bowe he would punch the terminally ill finance minister if he did not completely underwrite the bank’s disastrous losses. He said: ‘I’ll probably punch him,’ the jury heard Drumm boast. ‘And I mean punch him, as if to say, “What are you actually doing?’’’
He also said that the government better come up with a cheque of between €2billion and €3billion and he didn’t want any talk of transparency and honesty.
Drumm said he planned to tell Lenihan: ‘What’s this about having to go through due diligence? You made that decision on the 29th of September. You’ve told the f***in’ world we’re all solvent.’
When Anglo collapsed, Drumm fled to America, knowing that the blatant fraud would soon be uncovered. He was extradited after a five-year fight and yesterday stood as a convicted criminal, now awaiting sentencing for a financial collapse that has cost taxpayers tens of billions of euro.
The jury’s requests to hear the most damning of the audio tapes left little doubt about their intentions when the nine men and three women filed back into the courtroom just before 3pm yesterday.
Drumm just stared ahead when they found him guilty of conspiracy to pull off the €7.2billion fraud and the follow-up fraud of printing the false figures in Anglo’s accounts.
The maximum sentence for the conspiracy to defraud charge is unlimited and he faces a maximum sentence of ten years on the false accounting conviction.
His defence team told the court his wife and children were not present because they were at a graduation ceremony in Boston. They asked that he be released on bail for two weeks to get his affairs in order. Judge Karen O’Connor released him on bail with strict conditions to sign in at Balbriggan station every day and not apply for a new passport since his had expired. His sentence hearing will be at 10.30am on June 20. Comment – Page 14 paul.caffrey@dailymail.ie