3 Irish bankers sentenced for $8B fraud

DUBLIN — Three former senior bankers were given prison sentences Friday for their roles in concealing the loss of billions in deposits at the defunct Anglo Irish Bank, the biggest accounting fraud in Irish corporate history.

Judge Martin Nolan told the trio — former Anglo executives Willie McAteer and John Bowe and former Irish Life and Permanent chief executive Denis Casey — that they were guilty of committing “sham transactions” designed to inflate Anglo’s deposit levels by $8 billion in Anglo’s 2008 earnings report.

Casey received a prison sentence of 2 years, 9 months. McAteer received 3 ½ years, and Bowe received 2 years. All were convicted last month by a Dublin Criminal Court jury of conspiracy to defraud. All three men stared at the courtroom floor during the verdict. They have 28 days to lodge an expected appeal.

Casey’s bank supplied funds that Anglo falsely claimed as new customer deposits in full-year results to shareholders. Their surreptitious move was designed to cloak the funding crisis then enveloping Anglo, a Dublin bank that had spent more than a decade aggressively betting on Ireland’s property boom — which went bust during the global credit crisis that year.

State-empowered investigators found that the $8 billion spent barely one day on Anglo’s books before being transferred back to Irish Life and Permanent using deceptive labeling and a third banking unit. Anglo used the ruse to help reassure shareholders, who would lose their investment as Anglo shares plunged, that the bank remained on solid ground.