GARDAI PROBE GREEDY BANKS OVER TRACKER MORTGAGES SCANDAL
Watchdog officials are grilled by tds 30,000 13,000
Estimated total number of accounts that will have been affected Accounts of customers deliberately not given lower tracker rate
GARDAI have been called in to investigate money-grabbing banks over the tracker mortgages scandal.
It has been confirmed by the Central Bank it is now liaising with the Garda, Financial Services Ombudsman and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission as part of its examination of the controversy.
It has identified 13,000 accounts where customers were deliberately not given their proper lower tracker rate mortgages – resulting in up to 100 families being thrown out of their homes when they couldn’t keep up with the inflated repayments.
It is estimated the total number of accounts that will emerge as having being overcharged will be more than 30,000 before the end of the scandal.
Governor of the Central Bank Philip Lane and his officials were grilled before the Oireachtas finance committee over their role in policing the banks during this ongoing overcharging scandal. However, the financial watchdog was criticised as ineffective and was branded as “a dog with no bark” by Sinn Fein finance spokesman Pearse Doherty.
It emerged during the day-long meeting that the Central Bank have now involved an Garda Siochana.
This followed committee member Catherine Murphy TD telling the Irish Mirror the behaviour of the banks was a form of theft. Ms Murphy said: “In any other such circumstances you would expect the gardai to be investigating the people within banks who deliberately engaged in these overcharging practices.
“Those individuals have to be held accountable.
“The only way the grossly unjust overcharging on tracker mortgages will be resolved is to punish the bad behaviour of banks and bankers who have engaged in these practices.”
Governor Lane insisted the probe was “the largest, most complex and significant conduct review” undertaken by the bank to date.
He said: “We recognise the hurt and damage the actions of lenders have caused for many borrowers.
“We are pushing the limits of our powers to ensure affected customers are remedied appropriately.”
He raised concern that two unnamed lenders may have failed to identify impacted customers or failed to recognise certain groups of their customers had been affected by their failures.
He added: “We are of the view that some of these customers have in fact been affected and, accordingly, are entitled to redress and compensation.
“We have challenged the two lenders on these issues and they will report back to us by end of October.”