Pressure of Anglo trials ‘overwhelmed’ our corporate watchdog

VIRTUALLY all the resources of our corporate watchdog were dedicated to investigating or prosecuting Anglo Irish Bank cases for the past decade, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The Joint Oireachtas Business Committee recently gave notice to the Office of the Director of Corporate Law Enforcement to attend Leinster House to discuss ‘the number of prosecutions that have been brought by the ODCE in the past decade’.

This followed widespread criticism of the ODCE in the

‘Unfair not to consider work on Anglo cases’

wake of the collapse of the State prosecution of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick.

However, in a letter dated February 7, and seen by the Irish Mail on Sunday, the ODCE protested that, for the best part of a decade, it had been overwhelmed by Anglo-related investigations.

The watchdog said it was unfair to inquire into its performance in isolation of these complex cases.

ODCE director Ian Drennan, wrote: ‘It is important that the committee appreciates that, during the period 2009 to 2012, virtually the entirety of the ODCE’s investigative capacity was consumed by its Anglo-related investigations (of which there were five separate strands in total).’

Anglo Irish Bank, which was a beneficiary of the State bank bailout, ultimately cost the Exchequer over €30bn. The ODCE was then central to the trials that followed.

‘Subsequently, over the period 2014 to 2017… three trials have taken place before the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, with multiple convictions on indictment having been recorded against former Anglo Irish Bank Corporation plc directors,’ he added.

When the FitzPatrick trial collapsed amid public outcry last year, Judge John Aylmer was critical of the ODCE. The committee subsequently wrote to the body in May to invite it in to discuss the ‘very serious failures of the ODCE’s investigative processes’.

However, on December 14 the committee again invited the ODCE in but this time said it would not discuss some highprofile Anglo matters, including ‘the trial of Seán FitzPatrick or related matters’.

Instead it wanted to discuss ‘the number of prosecutions brought by the ODCE in the past decade’ – an impossible task according to Mr Drennan.

‘This,’ he wrote, ‘cannot meaningfully be considered without reference to the ODCE’s Anglo-related investigative work and the subsequent three trials.

‘During the trials, a significant proportion of the ODCE’s investigative/enforcement capacity (including a large proportion of its Garda capacity) has been consumed with preparing for trial and attending at trial.’ The letter also refers to a key Garda detective inspector post left vacant for over a year, ‘thereby further impacting upon the ODCE’s investigative capacity’.

In a letter dated January 31, the committee told the ODCE that it would also be expected to explain ‘the return to the State of €6m in funding allocated in the last three years’.

The watchdog said this was partly due to ‘the lead time between receipt of sanction for the recruitment of new professional staff and the taking up of those positions’. It added that the ODCE’s annual budgets include ‘a contingency sum which, by definition, is not ordinarily expended’.

‘Serious failures of ODCE processes’