Author: Anthony

Letter from a banker

RTE News report.

The chief executive officer of the EBS building society, Fergus Murphy, has said he hopes the Government’s National Assets Management Agency will consider taking up to €800 worth of development and related loans off its books.

He said the EBS would like an invitation to work with NAMA. On the question of mortgage interest rates he didn’t rule out an increase over the coming months.

Public Inquiry translation.

Dear (peasant) Taxpayer,

I have applied to the Government for permission to dip my hands into your pockets to replace €800 million that we gambled and lost through irresponsible and reckless lending which was triggered by our uncontrollable greed.

You will be aware, of course, that the application is nothing more than a formality, merely for the optics old chap. That we will get your money is an absolute certainty – We do, after all, own the body politic.

I must also inform you that we will be imposing a significant mortgage interest rate in October. You will have noted that (our) Brian has already given permission for this in his response to the recent TSB increase.

There’s no need for you to fret about the reasons for this increase, it’s all to do with complex economic mechanisms that you wouldn’t understand.

Yours sincerely
Fergus
PS: Suckers

Bertie's absence depresses journalist?

One of the more bizarre aspects of Irish writing in the 1980s was a tendency by journalists to write long, detailed and very, very boring accounts of their holiday experiences. At the time I wondered why this was so and came to three conclusions.

Nothing much else happening in the country/world.

Lazy and/or incompetent journalism.

A misguided sense of journalistic self importance stemming from the bizarre notion that readers might actually be interested in the equivalent of being forced to look at hundreds of aunt Martha’s holiday snaps.

The first conclusion is, of course, never true but unfortunately the last two always are and while the practice seemed to have abated during the boom years it is now back with a (depressing) bang.

Recently, Sunday Independent columnist Jody Corcoran, ‘treated’ readers to a long drawn out account of a sleazy holiday he took with a pal in Marbella.

Corcoran wanted to impress his readers by his heroism in taking a holiday when he wasn’t feeling the best, wanted to impress them with his machismo in dealing with prostitutes, wanted to impress them by casually mentioning that he partied with millionaire and former Formula I boss Eddie Jordan on his yacht anchored off Marbella port.

Corcoran tells us about the prostitutes on the yacht (I wonder how Jordan feels about that) and how their ‘Madam’ pulled up alongside the yacht in her flash car for a few words with her ‘staff’. Regretfully, Corcoran failed to provide readers with the technical details of a car that can drive out to a yacht at anchor.

But perhaps it’s not a return to 1980s style writing, maybe it’s just Corcoran, maybe he’s feeling down because he has nothing else to write about since his great hero the chancer Bertie Ahern was forced off the political stage – yes, I think that’s the answer.

Facing up to corruption

Letter today’s Irish Times.

Madam,

Is Elaine Byrne suggesting that it might be better if the Moriarty tribunal didn’t make any adverse findings against the State (Opinion, July 28th)? She speaks of embarrassment, and perceptions on the international stage and suggests that the final findings will be practically irrelevant anyway.

She ends by asserting:

“The challenge is to distinguish between systemic and individual corruption; petty and grand corruption; moral and legal corruption; and rumours and reality of corruption.”

I disagree. The real challenge is that, for once, we face up to reality and do what all other accountable democracies do – prosecute and mete out appropriate punishment to those found guilty of corruption. – Yours, etc.

ANTHONY SHERIDAN,

Denis O'Brien's media empire and the Moriarty Tribunal Report

obrien460Vincent Browne has an interesting article in today’s Irish Times where he asks some searching questions about Denis O’Brien’s media empire and how The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) could possibly conclude that:

The media holdings of Denis O’Brien do not constitute dominance in terms of his ability to influence opinion forming power in any of these franchise areas.

Browne makes the connection between O’Brien’s media empire and the soon to be published Moriarty Tribunal Report.

Last weekend two of the newspapers that he now controls, the Sunday Tribune and the Sunday Independent, published two self-serving interviews with him, intended to take the “sting” from the anticipated final findings of the Moriarty tribunal on the award to him of the mobile phone licence in 1996.

He goes on:

If his own version of the Moriarty tribunal findings prove correct, they would be a devastating indictment of himself, along with the then minister for communications Michael Lowry, and of civil servants involved in awarding the licence.

If his version is true, he will be accused of the most spectacular piece of corruption ever in this State, with the possible exception of the Irish Hospital Sweepstake scam.

And, it will seem, if what he says is true, that he has built his vast personal fortune on the basis of a criminal act.

A letter writer to the Irish Times also has his say about O’Brien’s media spinning.

Madam,

I was embarrassed last weekend to read the coverage of Denis O’Brien’s tribunal troubles in the Sunday Times . A front page article took leaked information about the Moriarty tribunal’s conclusions (not very positive it must be said) and managed to portray Mr O’Brien as some sort of hero, who was battling the tribunal to save the State money on legal fees.

Further on in the paper, there was a full-page spread on the excessive costs of the tribunal and yet further on, Mr O’Brien adorned the front page of the Business section about some triviality or other.

What could have been the spur to such embarrassing spin? Perhaps the Sunday Times is in awe of Mr O’Brien’s recent ascent to control of IN&M?

Yet another example of the need for The Irish Times to issue a Sunday version, thus sparing the public from the brainrot of the Sunday press.

Yours, etc,
TOMMY TIGHE,
Grove Park,
Dublin 6.

Denis O’Brien – They’ve damned us all I tell ya, damned us all

Billionaire businessman, Denis O’Brien is in deep trouble and he knows it.

It seems that the Moriarty Tribunal has found that O’Brien’s Esat consortium was illegally issued with the state’s second mobile phone licence because he, O’Brien, had a corrupt relationship with former Fine Gael minister, Michael Lowry (Sunday Times).

Mr. O’Brien has adopted a two pronged strategy of defence. He has launched a strong attack on the Tribunal while at the same time appealing for public support by claiming that his campaign is in the public interest as well as his own.

His first action was to publish a series of advertisements in various newspapers attacking the alleged extravagant expenses indulged in by tribunal lawyers.

Last Sunday he ramped up his campaign by giving a series of interviews in the following newspapers. The Sunday Times, Sunday Independent (O’Brien holds a 26% stake in Independent News and Media), Sunday Tribune (O’Brien holds a major stake in this newspaper, by proxy, through INM’s stake in the Tribune) and the Sunday Business Post.

He accuses the Tribunal and others of the following:

He believes the tribunal is “out to get a scalp” in order to justify its costs, which are expected to reach 100m.

He claims there was no need to investigate the awarding of the licence because it had already been investigated four times by the European Union, by the senior counsel, investigated on behalf of the Department of Communications and investigated by the Attorney-General’s office.

He claims that this is a very dark period for justice, that it’s rough justice akin to the miscarriage’s of justice in the UK like the Guilford Four.

He asserts that articles written by journalists like Matt Cooper and Sam Smyth were off the wall, crazy theories fed to them by O’Brien’s competitors for the phone licence.

You may as well be reading the Beano as reading the Irish Times on matters relating to the Tribunal according to O’Brien. He further suggested that Irish Times journalist, Colm Keena, is incompetent and not up to the job of covering the tribunal.

On the night O’Brien received the preliminary findings he told a friend he was in shock.

They’ve damned us all, he said. They’ve damned the licence, they’ve destroyed the civil service, they’ve destroyed Lowry and they’ve destroyed me.

These people [the Moriarty lawyers] need to be made to look ridiculous.

O’Brien also alleged that former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, made a political decision in 2002 to keep the Moriarty Tribunal going to embarrass Fine Gael.

According to O’Brien the Moriarty tribunal, which has cost him €12m in legal fees to date:

Is out of control and the procedures it is allowed to use are more akin to those found in a military dictatorship. It’s unheard of. I mean it’s Burma.

O’Brien also sees himself as a champion of the people and a patriot to his fingertips.

He’s fighting for the good name of civil servants who may be accused of corruption.

People who are halfway through their career would be impugned; I am taking a stand for the civil servants.

He’s fighting to save taxpayer’s money.

People say [I] did two judicial reviews, but they were mainly to stop the tribunal from running up costs.

He’s fighting for Ireland’s reputation.

Ireland’s reputation would be severely damaged if the Moriarty Tribunal’s final report concluded there was wrongdoing by civil servants in the granting of the state’s second mobile phone licence. If the final report concluded that the process of awarding the licence was corrupt, it would be devastating.

To borrow from Shakespeare – The billionaire doth protest too much, methinks.

O’Brien’s strategy of trying to save his own skin by crying crocodile tears for Mother Ireland is as old as the hills but it is very surprising to see Elaine Byrne of the Irish Times apparently adopt the same attitude.

Byrne seems to suggest that it might be better if the Moriarty Tribunal didn’t make any adverse findings against the State. She writes of embarrassment, perceptions on the international stage and suggests that the final findings will be practically irrelevant anyway.

She ends her article by asserting:

The challenge is to distinguish between systemic and individual corruption; petty and grand corruption; moral and legal corruption; and rumours and reality of corruption.

This is classic Irish denial of reality. Let’s get lost in a deep, long drawn out and totally irrelevant discussion on the different forms of corruption. That way we won’t have to face the brutal reality of any adverse findings from the Tribunal.

The real challenge is, for the first time in our pathetic history, to actually act on any adverse findings. To immediately prosecute and punish all those found guilty of corruption.

I won’t be holding my breath.

Time to bring the whole rotten system tumbling down

Vomit inducing is the immediate reaction on reading the extravagance of yet another of our low grade politicians who live in a parallel universe where they think they’re royalty (Sunday Tribune).

Former minister John O’Donoghue, his wife Kate Ann, and his private secretary Therese O’Connor ran up a travel bill of over €126,000 in the space of just two years. Among the expenditure were a series of €900-a-night hotels, €7,591 on airport pick-ups during a two-day trip to London, €120 for hat rental, €250 for water taxis and €80 to Indians for moving the luggage.

These people are so far up their own rectums that they are beyond redemption. It is not enough that we have an election to get rid of the current government. That will simply see the replacement of one swarm of parasites with another.

It is long past time that the people of this country brought the whole rotten system tumbling down.

Irish Financial Regulator – Still protecting the scumbags

Senator Shane Ross was writing about the Financial Regulator’s annual report last Sunday. The Senator continues to be astonished and staggered by the activities of our so called regulators.

Here are some of the things that staggered and astonished the Senator.

The chairman of the Financial Regulator, Jim Farrell, is a banker. Farrell was the boss of Citibank for many years. The publication of such details are the norm in accountable democracies but apparently rare in Ireland.

Such incestuous behaviour is not, however, unusual in Ireland. The bankers are on the regulators staff and it is quite common for regulators to end up as bankers after retirement. All part of the ‘old boy’s network’, old chap.

The Senator goes on to speak about the culture of secrecy at the Financial Regulator’s Press Office.

Their instincts for secrecy are ingrained. The watchdog’s press office must be a paranoiac’s paradise. Every question asked, however innocent, receives an evasive answer.

Tell me about it Senator. My efforts to get a straight answer from the Senior Press Officer last week was like trying to get blood from a stone.

And then there’s the ‘business travel’. Last year it came to €795,000 and this year will see a massive 22% increase to over €970,000. But, alas, as the Senator points out, taxpayer’s (peasants) are forbidden from knowing the details because the FR is protected by State secrecy laws.

In common with the rest of the media Senator Ross didn’t seem to notice that Farrell had, apparently, announced a major new policy to replace the principled based approach to financial regulation.

I rang the Department of Finance today to ask some questions about this alleged new policy and what happened, yes you’ve guessed. I received the same treatment that I received from the FR Press Office – waffle, stonewalling and riddles.

So just let me repeat – Neither the financial regulatory system nor the attitude of its staff has changed one iota. It is still the same secretive, arrogant system that has for many years protected the scumbags that infest the Irish financial sector.

Copy to:
Financial Regulator
Senator Shane Ross

Never in Ireland

Reading an article in the Irish Independent recently about the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi I was struck by the similarities between him and the corrupt Haughey.

Liar, dodgy planning, adulterer, manipulator of power for his own ends, loved by many despite his corruption, admired by the media for his Houdini like political escapes, rich and does what he likes.

It was only towards the end of the article that I spotted something that the corrupt Haughey never had to worry about. Apparently, once in a generation the Italian people rise up in furious indignation against injustice, oppression or corruption.

We’ll never see that in Ireland.

Financial Regulator's annual report – A dishonest whitewash

The Financial Regulator’s annual report, published last Tuesday, contains one very clear message that, depressingly, went completely unnoticed by the media.

That message is – Absolutely nothing has changed; the old regime is still in place; the old attitudes are still dominant; the interests of the people and the country will continue to take second place ahead of the interests of a ruthless and deeply corrupt financial sector.

Dodgy financial institutions will continue to enjoy full protection under a mountain of bureaucratic waffle and strict secrecy laws enthusiastically enforced by FR staff.

Jim Farrell is the public face of this disgraced and discredited Financial Regulatory regime. In an interview on RTE (5th report) he claimed that:

the way the country’s banks are now regulated is fundamentally and forever changed.

It is reasonable to assume from this statement that all is well at the Financial Regulator, that major reforms have been put in place which will protect consumers forever into the future and bring to account the corrupt vermin that have infested the Irish financial sector for decades.

In other words, it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Farrell has announced a virtual revolution in Irish regulatory methods and that from now on his organization will act in the interests of Ireland and its citizens rather than the interests of (dodgy) financial institutions.

The (revolutionary) measures announced by Mr. Farrell are as follows:

Extra staff with additional skills.

A more questioning and forensic approach to regulation.

Staff from the Financial Regulator are now on site in banks that are covered by the Government guarantee scheme. These people are full time and are monitoring the activities of banks.

The first two measures can be dismissed for the waffle that they are but the third measure is interesting.

My understanding of the presence of FR staff in the banks is that they are there in a temporary capacity as a result of the economic collapse and subsequent scandals.

I assumed, obviously wrongly, that once the crisis was over and banks were returned to private ownership that FR staff would also withdraw.

My understanding now, as a result of Mr. Farrell’s announcement, is that FR staff will become a permanent fixture on the staff not just of those banks under government guarantee but of all financial institutions to ensure that no such scandals could possibly recur.

To confirm this I contacted the Financial Regulator and spoke to the Senior Press Officer, Gill Forde.

Ms. Forde confirmed that it was official policy to have FR staff permanently on site in the covered institutions.

What about other financial institutions?

We are currently recruiting and enhancing our expertise in all of these areas and that’s the only detail I have for now.

My understanding from what Mr. Farrell said is that the banks covered by the Government guarantee are now going to have full time staff from the FR on a permanent basis.

Yes.

Even when they’re returned to private ownership?

He said the approach has changed and he was referring to principles based supervision.

What I’m inquiring about is the entire financial sector. Is it the policy of the FR to put their staff in all banks on a permanent basis?

The FR as you will be aware, there’s new legislation being brought forward by the Government forming a Central Bank Commission and I don’t have any more information.

I’m just going on exactly what Mr. Farrell said – The country’s banks are now regulated fundamentally and forever changed and one of the measures he has taken is to put people on site full time in those banks covered by the government guarantee.

Correct.

My question is – Is that a permanent policy, that FR staff will continue to monitor those banks forever and not just until the crisis is over?

I don’t have any information further than to say that that is our regulatory approach to supervising the banks.

So really what you’re saying is you don’t know.

I’m not saying that, I’m just saying that it’s a regulatory approach to supervising the banks.

Could you refer me to somebody who could answer the question?

That is our response.

I don’t understand your response; Mr. Farrell is saying that full time staff has been put on the banks

Exactly and that’s because the principles based approach no longer applies.

Are you saying that the placing of full time staff in the banks is a replacement for the principles based approach.

Yes, I am.

But it only applies to financial institutions under government guarantee and not to the entire financial sector?

The Regulator has been realigning with the new provisions and we are recruiting additional staff across the organization with the focus on risk, governance and enforcement

I tried to press the matter but Ms. Forde said she had to go and hung up.

Here’s my summary.

Mr. Farrell was being dishonest in suggesting that the temporary arrangement of placing FR staff in the banks was a major, industry wide and permanent reform.

(I say ‘temporary’ because nobody seriously believes that the banks would allow the Regulator to closely monitor their activities on a permanent basis)

In my opinion Mr. Farrell was just talking rubbish, just mouthing meaningless words to dishonestly convey the impression that substantial change had occurred that would, for the first time in Irish history, see genuine financial regulation.

Ms. Forde’s arrogant and dismissive reaction to my questions is exactly what I have come to expect from FR staff over the years. The attitude is still the same – Bureaucratic waffle, refusal to answer even the simplest questions and always the big stick of state secrecy laws.

Ms. Forde’s claim, for example, that the placement of FR staff in banks is a replacement for the principles based approach to regulating banks is, in my opinion, insulting waffle.

If such a major policy shift was in operation I wouldn’t be hearing it from a FR press officer, I wouldn’t even be hearing it from the chairman of the Financial Regulator on RTE News. I would be hearing it from a Government press conference chaired by the Minister for Finance as he announced to the world that Ireland had finally decided to take financial regulation seriously.

A much more disturbing aspect of this situation is the reaction or, more accurately, the non reaction of the media.

The publication of this year’s annual report by the Financial Regulator is arguably the most important event in Irish financial regulatory history.

It is the first annual report following the collapse of the economy which exposed the Financial Regulator as an incompetent toothless tiger unable or unwilling to reign in rogue elements in the banking sector.

This incompetence by the FR played a major role in the destruction of the economy and by extension is at least partly responsible for the massive financial and social damage to the people of Ireland.

Despite this, the media and in particular RTE effectively ignored the report and the fantasy (dishonest) claims made by Mr. Farrell.

This ignorance of what is really going on within the financial regulatory system and other so called regulatory agencies is a major contributing factor to the financial catastrophe now facing this country.

Copy to:
Financial Regulator
Financial Regulator (Press Office)
RTE