THE KEY WITNESSES
MATT MORAN: Former chief financial officer at Anglo
MATT Moran was Anglo’s former chief financial officer.
The State believed he knew more about the “overall circumstances” of the case than any other witness, but the jury was never told he was immune from prosecution.
Mr Moran gave evidence of high-level approaches he made to other financial institutions for proposed transactions in 2008.
He said he did not recall the genesis of the first deal with IL&P in March and wasn’t aware of the details until a 2009 “look back”. He was in Drumm’s office on September 30 “when John Bowe arrived and informed me at the time of the size of the transaction”, he said of his first awareness of the €7.2bn deal.
MATT CULLEN: Former head of treasury at Anglo
MATT Cullen was director of treasury at Anglo when he made the first approach to IL&P about an interbank deal.
Mr Cullen liaised with counterpart David Gantly and was heard on tapes discussing the deals between the two banks.
At the start of the 2008 crisis, Mr Cullen was reporting to Anglo’s chief financial officer Matt Moran, but later he reported to finance director Willie McAteer, and then head of capital markets John Bowe.
He said Drumm decided “who reported to whom”. Mr Cullen was on the Incremental Funding Initiative group when set up by Drumm in March 2008 after management met the Central Bank and Financial Regulator.
DAVID GANTLY: Former group treasurer at ILP
DAVID Gantly, director of treasury at IL&P, was Matt Cullen’s counterpart and was heard discussing the transactions with him.
Mr Gantly, described by Mr Cullen as a “sharp cookie”, had “no control or input into the decision” to go ahead with the deals, but brought Anglo’s request to his superiors.
He himself felt “uncomfortable” about the transactions, he told the jury in the trial.
After hearing about the “green jersey agenda” – Irish banks helping each other – Mr Gantly said he was instructed by Mr Casey to contact his counterparts in the other major banks including Matt Cullen.
CIARAN McARDLE: Former head of liquidity at Anglo
CIARAN McArdle, Anglo’s head of liquidity, organised the details of the IL&P deals, along with his counterpart there Paul Kane.
The jury heard Mr McArdle’s first phone call with Mr Kane saying: “I believe I’m giving you a yard.” The reply was: “I’m giving it back to you.”
He also dealt with Financial Regulator officials and was heard saying of the corporate deposits figure: “It’s trying to manipulate our balance sheet for our financial year end last night, what we have done is we have boosted our customer funding number which we didn’t include in our liquidity number so when our snapshot is produced at the beginning of December, it looks as good as possible.”
DAN TAYLOR: Accountant and expert witness
DAN Taylor, an English accountant who was the only expert witness in Drumm’s trial, may have delivered a fatal blow to the defence case.
He told the jury the Anglo/ IL&P deal had “no commercial substance” and the initial €1bn could have passed back and forth “ad infinitum” as the transaction had no financial constraints.
The defence argued his evidence trespassed on the role of the jury in deciding if Drumm was guilty of anything.
After legal argument, his evidence was ruled admissible. Judge O’Connor refused defence requests to have the jury discharged and instead said: “This is not a trial by accountant, it’s a trial by jury.”