Seán FitzPatrick’s lawyer calls investigation ‘a shambles’

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

The trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick was on its 75th day at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. The proceedings were reported on 3 February 2017.

He has pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act. These comprise 22 charges of making misleading, false or deceptive statements to auditors and five charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002–2007.

Bernard Condon SC, defending, finished cross-examining Kevin O’Connell, a lead investigator from the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), on 3 February 2017. Mr Condon described the investigation as “a shambles”.

During seven days in the witness box, Mr O’Connell admitted that the methods used to produce witness statements were wrong and unlawful. He attributed his mistakes to inexperience in investigating criminal offences and denied a deliberate effort to secure a prosecution at all costs.

Mr O’Connell said Judge Mary Ellen Ring had deemed the mistakes unlawful during an earlier trial in May 2015, and that the ODCE had since modified its practices.

Mr Condon accused investigators of crafting and creating witness statements to obtain evidence. Mr O’Connell said they would have stopped without relevant evidence and repeated that inexperience and insufficient input from colleagues had led to mistakes.

The jury had previously heard that Mr O’Connell shredded documents relevant to the investigation during the first trial in May 2015. He told Dominic McGinn SC, prosecuting, that the five pages destroyed would have been jottings and scribbled notes of telephone calls.

The trial was due to continue before Judge John Aylmer the following Thursday.