Sean FitzPatrick pleads not guilty to 27 Companies Act offences

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

Sean FitzPatrick has pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act. His trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court concerned allegations that he failed to disclose multi-million euro loans to auditors. The proceedings were reported on 28 January 2017.

On day 70 of the trial, defence counsel Bernard Condon continued cross-examining Kevin O’Connell, an investigator with the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE). The prosecution alleged that the loans were “artificially reduced” for two weeks around the bank’s financial year-end statement through short-term loans from other sources, including Irish Nationwide Building Society.

Bernard Condon questioned Kevin O’Connell about entering an April 2010 meeting with EY witnesses assuming that they had not known about loans moving to Irish Nationwide. Kevin O’Connell accepted that this suggested prejudgement, but said the evidence he had received contained nothing showing that the loans had been disclosed to the auditors. Bernard Condon said disclosure to EY would have meant “we wouldn’t be here” in court.

Kevin O’Connell agreed with counsel’s description of the approach as prejudiced and accepted that failing to ask witnesses about auditing standards was “a very serious mistake”. The standards suggested that auditors remind directors that misleading auditors was a criminal offence. He said investigators were building the case and had not wanted to set out its weaknesses at that early stage. The report said the trial was continuing.