The waiting game for guilty Drumm
State’s biggest fraudster counts down days until sentence hearing convicted: David Drumm walks to the BMW car parked outside his home on Thursday, the morning after he was found guilty of massive fraud
DISGRACED banker David Drumm’s wife Lorraine bought a €400,000 home – mortgage-free – just months after they returned to Ireland to face his fraud and false accounting trial.
The convicted fraudster is currently living in the luxury seaside property in the scenic north Co. Dublin town of Skerries awaiting sentence after his conviction this week.
The Irish Mail on Sunday can also reveal that before the mammoth trial, the 51-year-old father of two has enjoyed a relatively luxurious lifestyle frequently dining out with friends and family in seafood and Italian restaurants around the capital.
The former Anglo Irish Bank boss went to court seeking to have his bail conditions relaxed so he could go on regular holiday.
This week the bank boss – who revelled in been called The Drummer while CEO of the former Anglo Irish Bank – was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting to make the bank’s financial state look healthier than it was in 2008.
The case centred on the back and forth movement of €7.2billion from Irish Life and Permanent to Anglo Irish Bank. The jury of nine men and three women delivered its verdict after 10 hours and 32 minutes and it is expected the former banker will be given a custodial sentence when he appears at a sentencing hearing on June 20. None of his family were present when the jury delivered its verdict after the 16-week trial. Investigating gardaí, who pieced together the case against Drumm, warned trial Judge Karen O’Connor that Drumm was a ‘flight risk’. However, he was granted bail as long as he continues to sign on once a day at a Garda station just a ten-minute drive from the seafront home in Skerries. Drumm’s legal team told the court the banker should be bailed on ‘humanitarian’ grounds because his wife was in America at a college graduation of one of their adult daughters.
But it seems that since being convicted on Wednesday, the only time Drumm has ventured out has been to sign on at the nearby Garda station in Balbriggan.
According to the public property register the house was bought in August 2016 for €418,502 and his wife Lorraine was registered as the full owner in May of last year.
It would appear that it was a cash deal as no mortgage is attached to the three-storey townhouse which has stunning views.
This weekend a pair of high spec BMW vehicles were parked on the driveway. It seems the disgraced bank boss prefers the comfort of a 141 Six Series BMW saloon, which costs about €100,000 new, whereas it appears his wife Lorraine’s car of choice is a 152 BMW four-wheel drive.
And they both have opted to have tinted glass car windows in order to protect themselves from any straying or prying eyes.
A local revealed: ‘The Drumms are very concerned about security which is most unusual around these parts and we have all seen them driving around in blacked-out BMWs.
‘David and Lorraine both grew up in Skerries and during the good times when he was flying high you wouldn’t see them around the place much at all.
‘Skerries wasn’t good enough for them it seemed and you can still see Lorraine walking around with a bit of a stuck-up attitude.
‘He’s not much better. When he came back from America he was going into the shops introducing himself to shopkeepers as if he was some sort of celebrity.
‘He was going up to lads he went to school with, even though he hadn’t spoken to them for years, and telling them what an awful time the black prisoners gave him when he was in custody in America.
‘Some people would shake his hand but others would just walk out of the pub when they saw him coming in. They couldn’t believe the brass neck of him. It’s some comedown for him now.’
Drumm was impassive when the two guilty verdicts were delivered at the Central Criminal Court on Wednesday afternoon.
But according to friends, both he and his family are devastated by the conviction and the prospect of the banker serving time in prison.
One associate told the IMoS: ’I
‘We’re all paying for what he did... some lost lives’
was talking to one of his family and they said that it was cruel.
‘I really didn’t know what to say to that. We are all paying for what was done and some people have even lost their lives over the bank crash.’
The Drumm case was the most high-profile white collar crime case ever prosecuted and he was convicted ten years after committing the offences.
The case could have come before the courts sooner if he had stayed in Ireland after the crash.
It was the MoS that revealed in July 2009 – six months after he resigned as Anglo Irish Bank’s CEO – that Drumm had moved permanently to the US.
After a painstaking investigation by gardaí, 33 warrants were issued in 2014 and he was arrested in Boston in October 2015. He initially fought extradition but was sent home to stand trial in 2016.