White-collar criminals can bank on avoiding justice
IF ever we wanted proof that whitecollar crime is alive and well and immune to prosecution, we got it yesterday. We learned we have a criminal cartel of lenders that have robbed Irish people of hundreds of millions of euro and the State can’t or won’t do anything about it.
The Governor of the Central Bank confirmed there are at least 20,000 affected by the tracker scandal, which might make one of the worst mass frauds in history.
But is the institution going to do anything about it apart from advise those who have been ripped off to seek legal advice? This is the equivalent of someone robbing your house and the gardai telling you to take them to court. What we have learned about the banking system from the scandal is there are many more criminal organisations in Ireland than we knew. Central Bank Governor Philip Lane said it has very limited statutory powers to compel lenders to provide redress or compensation to customers.
It was yesterday branded “a dog with no bark” by Sinn Fein’s Pearse Doherty. It’s worse than that as this financial Fido has neither balls nor teeth and instead of biting those who pose a danger it sniffs then licks their nether regions.
It’s not that the ghost of Patrick Neary haunts the bank’s monument to vulgarity that was to be Anglo’s new HQ down on the Dublin docks, it appears the building has been staffed with equally useless and powerless clones of that regulator.
But at least we know that despite all the promises made after the crash nothing has changed and the banks are a law unto themselves.
We also know the Government or any State body, including the gardai, have no intention of stopping them perpetuate fraud against families. Mr Lane told the Finance Committee it is clear all lenders involved did not sufficiently recognise or address the scale of unacceptable failings until the Central Bank intervened. This is akin to saying the Kinahan cartel did not realise the depth of the carnage caused by their drug dealing until gardai stepped in.
Mr Lane also revealed the Central Bank is now liaising with the Garda and other State agencies.
Imagine, nine years after what many people believe to be a €500million fraud, the bank that oversees financial institutions has now contacted the police.
You can be sure if you fiddled a few euro on the dole or went shoplifting there would be no liaising between the injured parties and gardai, you’d be taken to the station.
That’s because the white-collar criminal has a revered, rather than a reviled place in Irish society, especially among the political classes.
Just as the financial crash was down to FF, the tracker scandal is Fine Gael’s baby because it has been in power since 2011 and has stood idly by since then.
Leo Varadkar is now throwing shapes because he has to be seen to be doing something, like in a PR sense, as one of his dozen spin doctors might say, and not because it’s the right thing to do.
Politicians can magically turn banking debt into public debt overnight but they won’t force money from the banks to those they robbed over an eight-year period.
It should be remembered Fine Gael and Labour forced an all-night Dail sitting to make sure IBRC, Anglo’s successor, was looked after. The Taoiseach has warned lenders they will face tougher laws if they fail to quickly and adequately compensate tracker mortgage customers.
Did we not hear this kind of guff when the banks broke the country nearly a decade ago?
Leo said the Finance Minister will “admonish” them for their conduct. There we go with the language reserved for the white collar criminal.
A few months ago this guy wanted severe punishment for those who cheated the dole.
Now he wants to admonish institutions engaged in mass fraud that has led to deaths and serious illnesses.
When the Government refuses to intervene maybe it’s time for the public to take direct action against organisations which, through their criminal actions, have made themselves enemies of the people.
Maybe it’s time for people to follow the example of the water protesters and begin picketing the banks and the homes of the organisers of this fraud.
After stealing their cash, they have then intruded into the lives of families to force them to buy cheap food and pull their children from sports clubs so they might pay money they did not owe.
Dozens of others have lost their homes through what should be called what it is – organised crime. Those who organised this fraud, and make no mistake about it this was highly organised, can have little complaint if such a situation comes about.
What we’ve learned is there are more criminal bodies here than we ever knew