Jury sent home after second day deliberating in former bankers’ fraud trial

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The jury hearing fraud conspiracy allegations against four former bankers was sent home on 19 May 2016 after completing a second full day of deliberations. The proceedings were reported on 19 May 2016.

Jurors had spent eight and a half hours deliberating. At 4.30pm, Judge Martin Nolan directed them to finish for the day and return on Friday.

Denis Casey, John Bowe, Willie McAteer and Peter Fitzpatrick have pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

The charge alleges that, between 1 March and 30 September 2008, they conspired with one another and others to mislead investors through a €7.2 billion circular transaction scheme intended to bolster Anglo Irish Bank’s balance sheet.

According to the prosecution case, the men helped arrange transactions involving loans from Anglo to Irish Life & Permanent (ILP), with the money returning to Anglo through Irish Life Assurance. The report described an alleged purpose of securing customer-deposit treatment for the funds: customer deposits were considered a stronger indicator of a bank’s health than inter-bank borrowing.

Anglo’s preliminary results dated 3 December 2008 counted the €7.2 billion deposit within customer deposits. The prosecution alleged that the scheme sought to deceive readers of the accounts by raising the reported customer-deposit figure artificially from €44 billion to €51 billion, a difference of 16 per cent.

The Anglo defendants’ lawyers maintained that genuine deposits had been recorded correctly and that no fraud had occurred. For the former ILP executives, defence lawyers argued that their clients could not control Anglo’s accounting treatment and had never intended to mislead the public.