Madoff gets 150 years and his accountant has been charged with aiding and abetting fraud and four counts of false audit reports.
In Ireland, to my knowledge, not a single accountant has even been investigated never mind actually charged despite the theft of countless millions in a whole variety of criminal scams over the years.
Meanwhile, Jim Flavin of DCC and Sean Fitzpatrick of Anglo Irish Bank are still walking around free men, still supremely confident that they will never have to suffer the indignity of actually accounting for their activities.
It isn’t just accountants – I have knowledge of complaints to the (a) Law Society of Ireland;(b) The Royal Society of Architects in Ireland; and (c) to a County Council; where there was evidence of (a) (unethical conduct) (b) conspiracy to effect an unlawful purpose, and (b) uttering a forged document – where the County Council were the agrieved party, ie the victim. There was prima facia evidence in all these cases. None of them resulted in anything except a waste of postage. The Law Society reluctantly assessed a VAT refund, never mind the age-old deal between the legal and real-estate branches; the RSAI found the person blameless, noting that his wife had recently had a baby, oh Christ, what next… (it is like judges judging judges who have had babies) and the County Council found that they had expended enough time, money and effort (cheers) on the matter – complaint was about a local noteworthy farmer with a letter of support from a failed Dail candidate but very vocal locally. This is Irish pork barrel politics, we have opted out. We are at the reluctant stage of saying they can do what they fucking well want; and let them go to Hell. And nothing is going to happen to the criminal lawbreaker or his poor wife who needs €4000 a week to maintain her household and isn’t seen in the Society pages any more; beyond giving up his beloved Aston-Martin… (but they are still running their respective and no-doubt well padded businesses)Where is the actual, down-to-earth-reality in all this goddam fantasy we are living with??? If we were 30, why wouldn’t we be off to Australia, or Canada, or New Zealand, so that 50 years from now we might be able to sing Mother Machree and talk of ‘home’ in misty-green terms? But to get it on track – I think that these next years’ emigrants will have enough sense to say, Fuck You, Ireland, and your goddam FF ruiners.