The Return Of Darby O'Gill To His Little People

By Charley Brady

He hasn't been sighted in quite some time, but like the proverbial bad penny he has now turned up with a vengeance. He's looking fit, tanned and happy as Larry, grinning his way around Dublin without a care in the world.

I'm talking of the man who was the head of Anglo Irish Bank, the same bank that shared responsibility in helping to bring Ireland to its knees.

I wrote of this completely unrepentant chancer about six months ago, but now that he has returned and is waving libel threats around let us revisit the gist of that column. You'll forgive me for repeating myself, I trust, as it certainly does need repeating.

Sean FitzPatrick grew from being an accountant to managing the small Anglo Irish Bank in 1985, before going on to head that same bank, which was by now worth 13 billion euros.

Amazingly, 80 per cent of his loans went to his cronies, the major developers who helped to run this corrupt little nation; and how many of these upstanding Captains of Industry benefited from that eighty per cent?

Twenty of them.

His enormous property portfolio ultimately included five star hotels, medical software firms and an oil well in Nigeria, if you don't mind. And that was to name only a very small amount of what he and another executive of the bank - Lar Bradshaw - had shares in or owned, some of them admittedly highly imaginative.

Yet under the civilized façade of Anglo Irish and under the foreign properties and the Irish bar in Las Vegas, something wasn't quite adding up. The shareholders, needless to say, knew nothing about it.

It was none of their damned business, after all, now was it? They were only the little people. They were only there to help finance the luxury that the fat cats enjoyed; but FitzPatrick had borrowed 84 million euro from the lender (and used it to buy shares in the bank), of which he had disclosed to the shareholders a measly 7 million. Altogether he had gotten 129 million euros.

He then managed to scrape together 45 million to pay off at least part of what he owed. It takes a lot to follow this guy's thinking, so bear with me.

How he got away with it for years was simple: every time an audit was to be done he just up and transferred his millions - well, technically the banks' millions, but let's not make it any more confusing than it already is - into another bank, Irish Nationwide.

He was helped in this by the man with the charming moniker of Michael "Fingers" Fingleton, another man who was regarded as a God to the bankers of Ireland.

And this went on for years. It says a lot about the auditors, doesn't it?

Sadly it all had to end. As the famous Celtic Tiger lay gasping its last breath and its cubs began to run for cover, the whole sandcastle was being washed away by the tide; and so Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan, that famous Laurel and Hardy double-act, decided to nationalise the bank and it was "screw the taxpayer" once again.

And at the very moment that the government of failure was trying to think of a way to bail out the banks - all of the banks - Sean FitzPatrick was shamelessly buying up 290,000 more shares and making a cool 12 million out of it.

That was the state of play six months ago when I wrote of the above. The smaller shareholders lost everything. People who had worked all of their lives and thought that they could at least look forward to a decent pension lost everything.

But if they had expected the likes of FitzPatrick to show contrition or remorse or even a shred of compassion to people who had found their lives in tatters then they had another think coming. Which brings us to the present.

Last week I had defended the record of the Irish Daily Mail (a paper that I must emphasise I have no connection with except as a reader) in being fearless in asking truly searching questions about what I consider to be the crimes of this government against the people. They don't get the credit that they should, probably because they are asking people to think, unlike many daily organs that simply toe the Party line. I didn't expect to return to that again, but a week is a long time...

Having been beneath the radar for the last months - and let's be honest, most men in his position would have been ashamed to show their faces in public ever again - Sean FitzPatrick re-appeared on the streets of Dublin, looking better than a man who should have a conscience should be allowed to look. Of course, therein lies the problem.

Having enjoyed his sunny holidays while those who trusted his bank worried where they were going to find the money to carry on, he was in jovial form, tanned and happy as he met up at a table outside the Ocean Bar with former Anglo chairman Peter Murray. On Wednesday the paper printed photographs of the smiling, carefree pair after being alerted by a no-doubt incensed member of the public.

And this is when Mr. FitzPatrick lost his sense of humour.

I had guessed that the totally out of proportion settlement of €1.8 million euros to Minister Martin Cullen's assistant Monica Leech against the Evening Herald for being called a "pretty PR woman" would open the floodgates for those who would now see newspapers as easy prey. (As someone observed a couple of days ago, if the good lady had been hit and disabled for life by a van delivering copies of the paper she wouldn't have received nearly so much.)

Thus it seems to be proving, although for anyone interested in free speech, we had better not let it.

FitzPatrick, fresh from his holidays, but still not feeling like even giving anything that resembled an apology to people that he has helped to destroy has threatened The Mail by calling it libel.

Here are some of the comments and demands from his team of lawyers (bet you didn't find any trouble in digging into your wallet for that expensive bunch, did you, Mr. FitzPatrick?).

"We are writing to you in connection with three articles published in your edition of July 1. Those articles contain material that is gravely defamatory of our client. "The comparisons with the convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff are grotesque. [As another journalist said, FitzPatrick isn't the same as Madoff. Madoff made an attempt, however poorly, to apologise.]

"In his capacity as non-executive director of Anglo Irish Bank, our client acted correctly and appropriately."

[Odd, that: as I recall, in his resignation speech he said that the hiding of his loans from the annual accounts was, let me see now, "inappropriate and unacceptable".

But he did nothing wrong. What fresh insanity is this?]

He wants an apology and, in his hubris, has even penned it for the paper to publish. It reads in part: "In our edition of 1 July 2009, we published three articles... We wish to apologise to Mr. FitzPatrick for comparing him to Bernie Madoff... There is no comparison with Mr. FitzPatrick. Mr. Madoff was found guilty of a serious of grave criminal offences..."

Did I read that right? WE WISH TO APOLOGISE TO MR FITZPTRICK?

My first thought on reading these extracts (it goes on and on, as do most megalomaniacs--- I'm just saying most of them go on like that - I don't include a skilled financial genius like you, Mr FitzPatrick, so put your little libel writ away.) was that HE wants an apology.

HE does.

Well, in a world of simpering fools and people who never stood up for a damned thing in their lives can you imagine how refreshing it is to see that The Mail is not backing down on this.

From their editorial: "[His claims] are manifestly outrageous as is his demand for a front-page apology. It is, of course, true that Mr. FitzPatrick did not steal his clients' money, as Madoff did. But, just like investors in Madoff's company, thousands of ordinary investors in Anglo Irish - many of them pensioners - lost their life-savings.

"And the taxpayers have been left with a nationalised bank that nobody wants, and a €4 billion headache after the Government decided to recapitalise it in recent weeks.

"He was not simply incompetent. What finally prompted his resignation as chairman last December was that he had hidden €87 million in directors' loans from shareholders while the books were being audited.

"Last September, Anglo Irish and Irish Life & Payment colluded in an underhand scheme to create the impression that the bank's deposit book was a lot healthier than it actually was."

There's a lot more; but really, what it amounts to is where else would you get away with this? If you were in a "normal" job and didn't wear a suit and tie you would have been under some - at the VERY least - severe questioning back in December. At the VERY least.

But of course, this is Ireland and so FitzPatrick and his likes are free to swan off for months in the sun, without a thought for the mayhem that they have created. And we, being the society of the soft, tip- the cap-to-your better's crowd that we are, let them.

For myself, I'll be interested to see how many newspapers show some solidarity and condemn this as the unacceptable face of white-collar skulduggery that it undoubtedly is.

And yet one more step in the insidious silencing of the press in this benighted country.

Hope to see you again next week, where, who knows, there may be more to come.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net