SEVENTEEN YEARS since his resignation as chief executive of National Irish Bank (NIB), and some 13 years after the tax evasion and overcharging scandals at the bank emerged, Jim Lacey was yesterday disqualified from acting as a company director.

The High Court’s disqualification of Mr Lacey marks the most senior casualty of the NIB affair.

The court said Mr Lacey’s conduct at NIB was “grossly negligent” and that he should be disqualified from managing any company.

Mr Justice Roderick Murphy said his conduct as chief executive and a director of NIB from 1988 to 1994 fell below the required standard and “constituted a fundamental failure of governance”.

During his tenure, it subsequently emerged, NIB was operating a scheme, involving Clerical Medical International, which allowed customers to evade tax by routing money through the Isle of Man.

The bank had also overcharged customers by loading accounts with interest and adding fees that were not owed.

In addition, there was a practice of treating certain accounts as non-resident when they were not, a practice which facilitated the evasion of deposit interest retention tax by the bank. NIB was the subject of an investigation by court-appointed inspectors from 1998 to 2004.