The Court of Appeal quashed an 18-month prison sentence imposed on former Anglo Irish Bank assistant manager Aoife Maguire and substituted a nine-month sentence, suspending any part that remained unserved on the date of the appeal judgment.
The appeal, heard by Justices Birmingham, Sheehan and Mahon, was against the severity of sentence. The court said the Dublin Circuit Court had imposed the original term on 31 July 2015, after a jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts against Maguire and two co-accused following a lengthy trial. The appeal judgment was delivered ex tempore on 21 December 2015.
The indictment contained six counts alleging conspiracies to defraud Revenue or to commit an offence under section 243(1) of the Companies Act 1990, involving the destruction, mutilation or falsification of records relating to bank property. The Court of Appeal said the counts concerned, in substance, one act of wrongdoing: a conspiracy to conceal several bank accounts linked in some way to a senior bank figure from Revenue. The accounts were omitted from a list provided during a Revenue audit. The court said their exclusion would not itself have had significant tax implications.
Evidence at trial was that Maguire told the bank’s IT staff what action to take to remove the accounts from documentation. The appeal court accepted that she was not acting on her own initiative and lacked authority to instruct the IT department independently; she was passing on instructions from people senior to her. The sentencing judge viewed her role as that of a conduit and described it as less responsible than those of the other defendants.
The appeal court found two errors in the original sentence: 18 months was more severe than necessary, and the sentencing judge had not considered suspending part of it. It said the offences were serious and involved deliberate deceit in a major, publicly quoted bank. It also took account of Maguire’s lack of previous convictions, positive character, community volunteering and caring responsibilities. The appeal was confined to sentence, which the court treated as an implicit admission of wrongdoing.
The court did not address several other arguments raised in the appeal, including issues about interactions with another person and comparisons with other bank staff. It quashed the Circuit Court sentence and imposed nine months’ imprisonment, suspending any unserved portion as of 21 December 2015.