The Director of Corporate Enforcement (DCE) has applied to the High Court for disclosure to him, by the inspectors who investigated National Irish Bank's affairs, of the names of the members of the bank's "board audit committee".
The committee was criticised by the inspectors in their report on NIB for failing to consider how the bank would address its potential retrospective liability for DIRT (Deposit Interest Retention Tax).
At the High Court yesterday Mr Justice Kelly fixed March 16th for the hearing of the director's application. The judge said it appeared the inspectors were claiming there were some issues of principle involved in the DCE's request.
In July 2004 the court held that the investigation into NIB's affairs had discovered that bogus non-resident accounts were opened and maintained in the bank's branches, enabling customers to evade tax; that accounts were opened in fictitious names; that there was improper charging of fees and that these activities were widespread throughout the bank and carried on for a long time.
In an affidavit for the director, Ms Ann Keating, the DCE's principal solicitor, said the DCE had seen the minutes of all four meetings of the audit committee of the NIB board in 1995. The DIRT issue came before the committee by way of a management summary in the quarterly audit report to the audit committee for the quarter ended February 1995.
She said the criticisms by the inspectors of the committee must relate to the manner in which the audit committee of the board in its 1995 meetings dealt with this issue. At meetings of April 7th and June 23rd the same two of three committee members were present but, at an October meeting, while two of three were present, one of those two included a member who was absent from the earlier meetings.
Despite the fact that the director believed he had identified the composition of the board's audit committee in 1995 and appeared to have identified the meeting of the committee giving rise to the inspectors' criticisms, nonetheless the director was not in a position to know with certainty the exact identity of the persons whom the inspectors criticised, Ms Keating said. He wanted the names of those three persons.
Yesterday Mr Justice Kelly received an affidavit from the NIB inspectors, Mr John Blayney and Mr Tom Grace. The inspectors said the DCE application raised matters which they believed to have implications, not just for them personally, but also for the conduct of future inspections.
