(Pictured: Sean FitzPatrick. Credit: Collins)
Former non-executive director with Anglo Irish Bank Fintan Drury has told the trial of Seán FitzPatrick that he was not aware of the bank’s extensive loans to the accused until December 2008.
On day 67 of the trial John Rowan, a former executive director with the bank, also testified that he did not have any knowledge of the accused’s practice of moving loans to Irish Nationwide.
Loans taken out by Mr FitzPatrick (68), his wife and family members increased from about €10 million in 2002 to €103 million in 2007. Mr FitzPatrick, the bank’s former chairman, is accused of failing to disclose the loans to auditors.
The prosecution alleges that the amount of the loans was “artificially reduced” for a period of two weeks around the bank’s financial end of year statement by short term loans from other sources, including Irish Nationwide Building Society.
Mr FitzPatrick of Whitshed Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow has pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act. These include 22 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and five charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007.
Fintan Drury told John Byrne BL, prosecuting, that he was a non-executive director and on the bank’s board from 2002 to 2008. He said he was not aware at any stage of Mr FitzPatrick’s extensive loans with the bank or the annual refinancing arrangement with Irish Nationwide.
He said he learned about it on December 16, 2008 when the accused told him.
John Rowan told the jury that he was an executive director and head of UK lending with the bank from 1998 to 2005. He testified that he had no knowledge of the loan refinancing arrangement.
Mary McCarthy said that she worked as an assistant manager on a lending team from 2004 and worked on matters relating to the refinancing arrangement with INBS. She told gardaí that she did not think there was anything wrong with what Mr FitzPatrick was doing.
“It was all out in the open. No-one was told to be quiet about it or be secretive about it in any way,” she told gardai.
Ronan O’Byrne, who worked in the bank’s lending department from 2000 to 2006, said there was no secret about Mr FitzPatrick’s loans and that people from a number of the bank’s departments knew about them.
He said that people involved with the loans spoke about them in a “big open plan office floor” in the bank’s offices on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin city.
The trial continues before Judge John Aylmer and a jury.