Willie McAteer, Denis Casey and John Bowe jailed for fraud
This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.
On 29 July 2016, Judge Martin Nolan jailed Willie McAteer for three and a half years, Denis Casey for two years and nine months, and John Bowe for two years for conspiring to make Anglo Irish Bank’s books appear €7.2 billion healthier.
The proceedings were reported on 29 July 2016. All three had pleaded not guilty. A jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court convicted them in June 2016. The scheme circulated money from Anglo Irish Bank through Irish Life and Permanent and Irish Life Assurance before returning it to Anglo, presenting inter-bank lending as customer deposits.
Denis Casey told gardaí his agreement to the short-term loans depended on his company facing no risk. He said he neither knew nor intended that Anglo would portray the loans as customer deposits. The judge acknowledged that Anglo devised the scheme but condemned Denis Casey’s participation as disgraceful and reprehensible.
Judge Martin Nolan called the transactions “dishonest, deceitful and corrupt”. He said the men made no personal gain and the offsetting inter-bank loans caused no loss to the State or banks. He also said the transactions had not brought down the banking industry, while stressing that their conduct remained extremely wrong.
The judge considered their backgrounds, contributions to their communities, job losses, suffering within their families and absence of personal profit. He set eight years as his sentencing starting point. John Bowe received the shorter term because of his lesser role and because he was not a board member. The men had 28 days to lodge notices of intention to appeal their sentences.
Willie McAteer also had a 2014 conviction under Section 60 of the Companies Act over unlawful Anglo Irish Bank loans to ten property developers in July 2008. For that separate offence, he completed 240 hours of community service instead of serving a two-year prison term.