Cork Blogs.com

[posted to thestory.ie] Readers will be aware that Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised in January 2009. This came after the bank guarantee scheme of September/October 2009. Anglo became a prescribed body under the Ethics in Public Office Act last summer, which was expanded through a statutory instrument in February 2010 to cover many subsidiaries of the bank. However, Anglo has not become a prescribed body under the Freedom of Information Act 1997/2003. This would require the signature of Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan. Given the sheer volumes of public money already given to the bank, and the volumes of public money due to be given, it is outrageous that the public has no recourse to information as to how this money is being spent. We cannot quantify expenditure by the bank, nor has the...

[Cross posted to thestory.ie] I was interested in some FOI work that Deputy Joan Burton had been doing lately on Anglo Irish Bank, so I contacted her and asked for any documents or refusals she had received. She was kind enough to copy everything and post them down to me. I have now scanned and OCRd the documentation. First up is Ireland’s notification to the European Commission surrounding the injection of €1.5bn of capital into the bank. It runs to over 50 pages and contains some curious stuff. Many of the handwritten notes are I believe by Deputy Burton herself, or her staff. But there are other curious oddities, some of which are highlighted. Firstly the document appears to have been poorly redacted. There are strikethroughs throughout the document with notes afterwards such...

The Independent leads tomorrow with a story about €100m in outstanding loans on which former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick is apparently not paying interest. That’s an interest bill of €400,000 a month, but no repayments are being made. This actually partly relates to my story the other day about Anglo-Irish Nominees Ltd. We know Mr FitzPatrick had personal loans from Anglo. But those loans did not include lending like the Atrium deal set out below. Money was lent to a company in which he had a beneficial interest. I wonder how much of Anglo’s lending related to Mr FitzPatrick’s personal interest in investments? This is on top of the personal loans we are already aware of. And how many more of Anglo’s staff have loans, directly or indirectly,...

[cross posted to thestory.ie] The Daily Mail and Sunday Times have commented already on Lenihan’s diary as published here last week. The Daily Mail concentrated on the meeting with Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone on November 12, 2008. The Sunday Times was more concerned with all the constituency work Mr Lenihan was doing when he perhaps should have been doing more important work. For my own part I’ve been parsing the document to see what dates coincide. I’ve also drafted and sent two follow up FOIs on the basis of information gleaned from Mr Lenihan’s diary. There will likely be follow ups to those too. However, the diary itself raises a number of question that I will list here. 1) Why was a meeting with Sean FitzPatrick on September 18 not listed in the......

The first in a multipart series looking at the companies and subsidiaries of Anglo Irish Bank, now a State-owned entity. Happily the series almost coincides with the first anniversary of the bank guarantee announcement. Onto the details: First up is Anglo-Irish Bank (Nominees) Ltd. Second a definition: A nominee company is a company formed by a bank or other organisation for the purpose of holding shares on behalf of the beneficial owner. Nominee company employees carry out all the paperwork and other tasks associated with the documentation of shareholding and arrange for necessary transfers when a share is purchased or sold. The company has an address at Stephen Court 18/21, St. Stephens Green Dublin 2, like many Anglo Irish companies. The company was incorporated on the 23rd of...

For two weeks now I’ve been trawling the companies wholly owned, or party owned, by Anglo Irish Bank. It’s tough going. I plan to tabulate all the information so people can see just what was nationalised, and just what we now own. I’ve already found some curious connections, curious companies, and some newsworthy items. Shall I dump it all in one go, or drip feed it? :-)...

Via the Sunday Times business section: 1. Gerry Gannon, owner of the k-club. 2. Joe O’Reilly, developer. 3. Seamus Ross, developer. 4. Jerry Conlon, healthcare. 5. John McCabe, builder. 6. Patrick Kearney, developer. 7. Paddy Mc Killen, investor. 8. Brian O’Farrell, developer and auctioneer. 9. Gerry Maguire, developer. 10. Sean Reilly, builder. Another interesting angle today too (seems like a newsdump). Brian Cowen/FF allegedly received a total of €65,000 in donations from members of this group and others, in the same week that the men met to arrange the Anglo share support operation. Cowen is said to have received it in €5,000 tranches, the Mail on Sunday reported....

One of the Anglo 10 is signing assets over to his wife, according to the Irish Mail on Sunday. I did a backgrounder on Mr Gannon here. LEADING developer Gerry Gannon is transferring properties worth tens of millions of euro, including an entire lake and foreshore, into his wife’s name. The surprise move – initiated with 10 applications to the Property Registration Authority last Wednesday – comes as an increasing number of developers succumb to their massive debts and banks begin to foreclose on loans and seize their assets. The motivation behind the sudden transfer is unknown – Mr Gannon and his lawyers refused to comment on the matter this weekend. Mr Gannon is the co-owner of the K Club and reportedly one of the so-called Golden Circle, a group of investors who...

The Sindo has named a fifth member of the Anglo 10, along with the four already in the public domain. Mr McKillen is the man behind the successful Jervis Shopping Centre in Dublin and is a member of the consortium that recently mothballed the proposed U2 tower in Dublin docklands. So now we have: Paddy McKillen Gerry Gannon Jerry Conlan Joe O’Reilly Seamus Ross...

Maybe someone out there can lend a hand. I was re-reading the Moriarty Report and came across this: The genesis of Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust Limited, and how it became a bank in its own right, has already been referred to. In 1984 it was sold by Guinness & Mahon (Ireland) Limited to Guinness Mahon & Co. Limited in London, its parent company. The following year it was sold on to a consortium, which included Mr. Traynor, Mr. Furze and Mr. Collins. In turn they sold a 75% interest to a London bank called Henry Ansbacher & Company, a member of the Ansbacher Group, and the name of the bank was changed to Ansbacher Limited. Its title was since changed again to Ansbacher Cayman Limited, and the remaining 25% interest was also sold to the Ansbacher Group, which itself was later...

I was interested to note the following: On June 13, 2002, it was reported that outgoing Minister for the Environment Noel Dempsey made his appointments to the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. The appointments were: Lar Bradshsaw (Re-appointed chairman) Angela Cavendish (Alexsam Corporate Finance) Donal Curtin (Accountant of Byrne Curtin Kelly) Declan McCourt (Auto dealer OHM Group) Niamh O’Sullivan (Arup) Sean Fitzpatrick (Anglo Irish Bank) Mary Moylan (Asst Sec Dep of Env) Joan O’Connor (Interactive Project Managers)...

Says Ross in last Sunday’s Independent: LAST April I met a hotshot Dublin businessman in a southside pub. He was not a household name but — at that time — he was as rich as Croesus. And he was angry at a piece I had written about Anglo Irish Bank. The meeting was cloak and dagger stuff. He was not keen be seen with me; but he wanted to warn that those who were attacking Anglo would get their comeuppance. He wished to see the story in print. The hotshot revealed that a group of his well-heeled cronies were determined to set up a revenge fund to punish all those short-sellers who had targeted Anglo. These guys had a sense of ownership: his friends were going to defend “their” bank at all costs. Those standing in the way would be swept aside by the flood of...

Thanks to the Sindo we have this from a Fine Gael spokesman: Mr Kenny’s spokesman yesterday said that when Mr Kenny had questioned the Taoiseach about whether any members of the Cabinet were involved in facilitating the so-called ‘Golden Circle’ he did not have a specific individual minister in mind. He added, however, that it was “not credible” that the Government had no knowledge of controversial transactions involving Anglo Irish Bank, stating that the Taoiseach, when he was Finance Minister, had a private dinner with the board of Anglo Irish Bank “three days” before the media first wrote about the possible existence of what has now come to be known as the ‘Golden Circle’. I might have missed it before, but I’ve not seen...

Anne Heraty, formerly of the Anglo board, has resigned from the boards of Bord na Mona and Forfas. She has already resigned from the board of the Irish Stock Exchange....

Gerry Gannon has been a builder/property developer since the 1980s. As far back as 1986, Mr Gannon - through the firm Structural Developments Ltd - was building at Castle Village in Celbridge. In 1988, Gannon, through another firm - Noteworthy Limited - with partner Michael Anglim, planned to build 710 houses at Brackenstown close to Swords. At the time it was one of the largest schemes submitted to Dublin County Council. Permission was granted for the scheme in October 1988. The scheme at the time was said to be worth upwards of £40m. The site on which the houses were built was bought by Noteworthy Ltd as a parcel of land in 1987. The land was zoned for residential purposes in 1983 against the recommendation of the Council’s planning officials. In April 1990, Mr Gannon, now...

Anthony draws some valid comparisons between the Ansbacher scandal and the Anglo scandal in a mega post. He is right, we are getting the same guff as we got in 2002 before Ansbacher was published, and we are getting the same guff now....

The Gardaí raid offices of Anglo Irish Bank in Dublin in the first positive step in restoring confidence in the Irish Government. It’s a shame that that it took almost violent public outcry from the people to stir action from the lame corrupt ministers. It’s also a shame that any incriminating evidence has probably been destroyed and disposed of....