SEÁNIE’S COURTROOM SAGA
THE beefing up of Office of the Director for Corporate Enforcement comes months after the office attracted criticism in the wake of the controversial Seán FitzPatrick trial.
Ex-Anglo Irish Bank chairman Mr FitzPatrick was acquitted in May of all charges against him – amid claims from his defence of witness coaching and document shredding.
This followed two trials: the first was abandoned in 2015 after the lead investigator admitted shredding evidence; the second ran for 126 days before Judge John Aylmer ended it.
The second case at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court set a record for the longest criminal trial at the expense of the taxpayer.
Mr FitzPatrick, who was both chairman and chief executive of the doomed bank, faced 27 charges of misleading the bank’s auditors, and of furnishing false information regarding multi-million-euro loans to him and people connected to him, between 2002 and 2007.
Mr FitzPatrick, of Whitshed Road, in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Judge Aylmer found the investigation conducted by the ODCE had made ‘fundamental errors’ and ‘fell far short of the standard of impartial, unbiased, thorough investigation’ which was required by law.
He said the investigation had sought to ‘build a case’ against Mr FitzPatrick, and had not sought out evidence of innocence as well as guilt. Key witnesses had been coached, and their statements crafted by teams of lawyers, so their words suited the ODCE’s purpose, he found. The trial was therefore unfair, and lacking in evidence on certain points, he said.
The judge noted that the investigation was run by a solicitor employed by the ODCE as a legal adviser, Kevin O’Connell, who had no previous experience relating to the proper investigation of indictable offences.
He described the shredding of documents by Mr O’Connell, which took place during the first trial, as ‘extraordinary’.