Three bankers to be sentenced over Anglo conspiracy

A sentencing hearing will be held next month for three former senior banking executives after the longest criminal trial in Irish legal history ended yesterday.

Denis Casey (56), the former group chief executive of Irish Life and Permanent (ILP), was declared guilty yesterday afternoon by the jury which on Wednesday of last week found former Anglo Irish Bank executives Willie McAteer (65) and John Bowe (52) guilty of the same offence.

All three were found guilty of conspiring together and with others to mislead investors by setting up a €7.2 billion circular transaction scheme between March 1st and September 30th, 2008, to bolster the balance sheet of Anglo Irish Bank.

Former ILP finance director Peter Fitzpatrick (63), of Convent Lane, Portmarnock, Dublin, was found not guilty last Friday.

Casey, of Raheny, Dublin, Bowe, of Glasnevin, Dublin, and McAteer, of Greenrath, Tipperary town, Tipperary, are all remanded on continuing bail to July 25th next, when a sentencing hearing will take place.

The trial, which began in January, is probably the most expensive criminal trial ever held in the State and will be followed later this year and next year, by other, similarly complex trials involving matters to do with Anglo Irish Bank.

The jury, which had been reduced to 11 members because of the illness of one member, found Casey guilty yesterday afternoon by a 10-to-one majority. The jury, which heard its charge from Judge Martin Nolan on Tuesday, May 17th, deliberated for 61 hours and 46 minutes, over 14 days, a record for an Irish criminal trial.

Casey did not react to the verdict but looked shaken as he made his way out of the court after the judge had risen. Before discharging the jury, Judge Nolan thanked the jury members for their attention and attendance over the course of the long trial and said they had been “a great jury”. The trial had taken almost six months of their lives but they had been a credit to themselves and to the jury system, he said.

None of the accused gave evidence to the trial though Casey did, during legal argument in the absence of the jury back in February, give evidence in relation to the attitude of the Financial Regulator, Patrick Neary, during the 2008 financial crisis.

Mitigation

Judge Nolan ruled that the position of the regulator, and the Central Bank – that Irish banks should support each other during the crisis – could not be a defence to criminal acts, although it might be a cause for mitigation in the event of convictions.

He also said, in a previously unreported ruling in February, that he “reluctantly” accepted the argument of the prosecution that the accused could not use the attitude of the Financial Regulator to argue a defence of entrapment.

Judge Nolan, in February, also said that, if pushed, he would believe the evidence of Casey in relation to the attitude of the regulator and the then Central Bank governor, John Hurley, in 2008. The judge said the two men were very "hands on" during the crisis and put in Casey's mind the idea of a "green jersey" agenda for the Irish banks.