Drumm omitted ‘large amount’ from US bankruptcy filings

The court-appointed officer overseeing the US bankruptcy of former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm said he omitted a "large amount" of information from his sworn bankruptcy statements.

Kathleen Dwyer, a trustee who has administered 15,000 bankruptcies, said that based on her experience Mr Drumm left out a significant amount of information for a person who has filed for bankruptcy. "It was absolutely a large amount," she said.

Testifying on the fourth day of Mr Drumm's bankruptcy trial in Boston, Ms Dwyer was asked by her lawyer whether the statements of financial affairs filed by the former banker after he filed for bankruptcy in October 2010 were adequate. "Absolutely not," she replied.

Ms Dwyer and the bank, now called Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, are seeking to deny Mr Drumm a discharge from bankruptcy and a fresh financial start. They claim that he defrauded creditors by transferring cash of $1.2 million (€876,000) and interests in properties to his wife in 2008 and 2009, and that he failed to disclose those transfers in sworn bankruptcy statements about his financial affairs.

Asked why she brought a legal challenge against Mr Drumm, Ms Dwyer said: “The debtor did not perform the duties to fully disclose assets and transactions, which impedes the effective administration of the estate for creditors, which is what bankruptcy about.”

Instead of disclosing everything up front in his financial statements, in Mr Drumm’s case “things leaked out over time,” she claimed.

Ms Dwyer, continuing her testimony from Friday, said that Mr Drumm disclosed the cash transfers in a two-page document he gave at a meeting he requested on January 24th, 2011. She described the document as “a bit confusing” - “he was trying to give the big picture of what his financial life had been and what brought him to this point.”

The trustee said that it was “most unusual” that Mr Drumm included a list of transfers in the document but not the dates of transfers.

Under questioning from Mr Drumm’s lawyer David Mack, Ms Dwyer said she was “quite sure” that she told Mr Drumm at the end of the January 24th meeting that he had to file amended financial statements, under oath, detailing his cash transfers to his wife. She was asked repeatedly by Mr Mack about whether she said this.

The trustee recalled her “frustration” with the meeting because it was “not productive” and Mr Drumm did not understand the importance of presenting information under oath and in sworn financial statements “as opposed to the informal presentation that he preferred.”

“We sat through this meeting and everything was off the record,” she said. “I wanted him to understand that I wanted it on the record.”

Ms Dwyer confirmed to Mr Mack that she never filed a “motion to compel” order against Mr Drumm to force him to disclose information.

She said that she always gives a debtor “a second chance” to disclose information at a continued meeting of creditors known as a “341’ meeting but that in Mr Drumm’s case the initial disclosures in October 2010 were “so missing” in the relevant information.

Even though he filed amended financial statements in May 2011, that was “just beyond what is reasonable,” she said.

Ms Dwyer confirmed that after Mr Drumm filed for bankruptcy Anglo sought to appoint their own trustee Michael Epstein.

She said that she filed a legal challenge against the bank on November 16th 2010 seeking to block the appointment of Mr Epstein as an alternative trustee. In her challenge, she claimed that the bank owed more than $3 million to Mr Drumm which made Anglo ineligible to vote for a trustee.

She claimed that her legal challenge was a “procedural vehicle” for presenting reasons why the bank was not eligible to vote for a trustee.

Ms Dwyer later agreed to hire Mr Epstein as a forensic accountant to assist her in her role as trustee. “That made sense,” she told the court, because Mr Drumm’s bankruptcy was going to be “a forensic case” and that there was “a lot of money involved.”

Asked if she had cut a deal with the bank, Ms Dwyer said: “This made sense to everybody and it was clearly laid out in the applications to employ Mr Epstein filed with the bankruptcy court.”

Ms Dwyer confirmed that Mr Drumm’s claim for $3.6 million in unpaid salary, pension, benefits and bonus against the bank, which she had taken over, was still pending. “I believe Mr Drumm is owed money,” she said, but added she hadn’t focused on the claim “for quite a while.”

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” she said.

The bank and trustee argued in a pre-trial memo that Mr Drumm's inclusion of the $3.6 million claim in a personal financial statement provided to Anglo on October 1st, 2010 in the run-up to his filing for bankruptcy was an example of "financial chicanery" and a "sleight of hand" to show he had a positive net worth so as to avoid a possible bankruptcy petition against him in Ireland.

Earlier, Ms Dwyer said there were no regularly scheduled repayments or an interest rate attached a purported loan of $210,000 from Mrs Drumm to Mr Drumm. She concluded that the source of the loan was Mr Drumm’s earnings.

The trial continues.