Strokestown **Mod Note in Post #4461**

In May of last year, the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil that the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) would provide a full report into the collapse of the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chief Seán FitzPatrick.

The Business and Enterprise Minister Heather Humphreys was interviewed by Áine Lawlor on RTÉ’s News at One this afternoon about the refusal to publish the full report and the decision to, instead, publish a 30-page summary-like document about the shortcomings.
The following exchange came after Ms Humphreys – who said she intends to turn the ODCE into an independent statutory agency and said the ODCE has since received more money and staff – insisted the ODCE is doing a “lot of good work”.
Áine Lawlor: “We have heard all these promises about transparency and accountability and resources and all the rest before. The track record, as you’ve referred to yourself, is patchy to say the least.
“Now, the Cabinet, the Government has, according to media reports, a 235-page report from the ODCE, with 3,000 pages of appendices, going through all the previous failings. Now given that Anglo Irish and IBRC, between them cost the Irish State and taxpayer nearly €35billion and that debt is still there in the national debt – why should the public not have the fullest account?
“Why are we only getting this 30 pages that you’ve published today?”
“Surely we deserve full transparency here?”
Heather Humphreys: “Yeah, well I just want to say that I’d like to be able to publish this report but I can’t. Because of legal advice, I would be contravening the Companies Act, if I did so – that’s why I have, today, published an account of the shortcomings identified by Judge Aylmer…I just want to make sure that what happened in the past, and it is historic now, will not happen again.”

Sean FitzPatrick’s wife claiming about €6m in assets
Catriona FitzPatrick tells High Court the couple did not lead an extravagant lifestyle
Wed, Apr 25, 2018

Mr FitzPatrick was declared bankrupt with assets of some €47 million and debts of €147 million, and has since exited bankruptcy.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chairman, Sean FitzPatrick, had a €22m pension fund from Anglo Irish Bank when he retired as CEO in 2005, he told the High Court.
He and his wife Catriona took €5m of that out in cash and used it to help fund investments, he said.
The court is deciding whether Mrs FitzPatrick has a €6m beneficial interest in 18 assets despite her husband having being declared a bankrupt in 2010 and from which he has since exited.

Later securities included the interests the couple has in investment portfolios with stockbrokers, Bloxham, Davy, NCB, Morgan Stanley, Merrion and the Quinlan fund.
Other securities, held by their children, included in relation to first legal charges over four flats in London and another in Bray, Co Wicklow, Mr FitzPatrick said.
By 2007 there were 29 items of additional security, none which were part of the disputed 18 assets before the court, he said.
He believed the rough value of those additional securities was some €40m but said that was an understated valuation because they also included a Nigerian oil field which was only valued at €15m for the purpose of security but was, he said, actually valued at some €38m.
The case resumes on Tuesday.

The banker, who had previously claimed his income was down to just €188 a month, pitched up at the swanky Smurfit-owned K Club — where rooms can cost €900 a night — for the wedding. The following year, brazen FitzPatrick even had the neck to line out at a lavish testimonial dinner for rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll at the exclusive Grosvenor House Hotel in London’s Mayfair.
The supposedly skint financier mingled happily with the likes of Bono, Niall Horan, Emeli Sande and Prince William at the VIP BOD bash — prompting many to question how he afforded the €700-a-head entry. All the while, Seanie was holidaying in the States, and stayed at five-star hotels in Poland during the Euro 2012 footie tournament.
And when he’s not relaxing at his plush home in Greystones, Co Wicklow, he is regularly to be found striding about the swanky Druids Glen golf resort in Newtownmountkennedy.

NIMAN wrote: »

A slightly racist post?