Audit NAMA

If the Irish state is going to pay for NAMA for 20-30 years, the Irish people demand to know what is on NAMAs books. There are multiple indications of criminality involved in contracts developers agreed with the banks. It is widely accepted that NAMA is riddled with dodgy contracts, however, immunity from the Freedom of Information Act inhibits further investigation into this matter. But we know for certain, members of the DDDA failed to comply with statutory requirements to desist from any considerations of matters before the authority in which they may have had a commercial interest.

An audit of NAMA would expose these crimes, it would lead to the shutdown of a large portion of NAMAs activities if not the entire agency itself, thereby reducing the “national debt” by almost 50%.

The “brains” behind NAMA include: Frank Daly a former revenue commissioner who upon retirement from that post in April 2008, was taken on a private dinner by Irelands banks; Steven Sealy, who comes form the steering committee of the IMF; Alan Ahearne who comes from the Federal Reserve, is an acolyte of Alan Greenspan; Kevin Cardiff, enough said; Peter Bacon, former managing director of Goodbody Stockbrokers.

All of the men mentioned above, the “brains” behind NAMA, are directly or indirectly involved in the type of finance capital that brought about the need for NAMA in the first place.

We are told that NAMA is not a bailout for developers, but the evidence suggests that this is exactly what NAMA is.

Max Keiser on the Irish Economy November 2011

Sinn Fein walk out of Dail over €700m Anglo bond repayment

By Independent.ie reporters Wednesday November 02 2011

MEMBERS of Sinn Fein dramatically walked out of the Dail this morning following the government’s refusal to allow a debate on the repayment of the unsecured, unguaranteed €700m bond to Anglo Irish Bank bondholders.

Finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said the government had shown “contempt for the opposition” by refusing to have a debate on the issue.

“We were asking them to have a proper debate on the merits of handing over such a large sum,” Mr Doherty.

When that wasn’t allowed he said that Gerry Adams had ordered the Sinn Fein members to leave the chamber as a mark of protest.

Mr Doherty said one thing they had got out of proceedings was hearing Taoiseach Enda Kenny admit there was no legal requirement on the government to make the pay backs which came due today.

A second bond payout of over €1bn will also be due next January.

Earlier Mr Kenny came under fire in the Dail today over the controversial repayment of the €700m bond.

He sustained attacks from opposition leaders from Fianna Fail’s Micheal Martin and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams over the payment which is due today.

Mr Martin said the Fine Gael led government had “failed to deliver” to the Irish people and is misleading them in relation to the bank.

But the Taoiseach hit back at Mr Martin reminding him of the role Fianna Fail played in the economic slowdown and the banking crisis.

“I thank Minister Martin for his history lesson but he left out some important details,” he said.

“We have not been able to unravel agreements made by your government when €17bn in payments were made to Anglo bondholders.”

“We have succeeded in getting a €10bn reduction in interest rates and this would not have happened if we had defaulted on the Anglo Irish Bank debt.”

The Taoiseach also refused to answer a direct question from Senator Shane Ross that the Government asked the European Central Bank directly about the repayment.

And he conceded that the payments were not part of memorandum of understanding with the EU/IMF/ECB troika bailout package but he highlighted that they were part of an agreement made by previous Government.

THE former director of Anglo Irish Bank, who was arrested yesterday in connection with fraud, has been released without charge.

Meanwhile, the former financial director and chief risk officer of Anglo Irish Bank, William McAteer (60) has been released without charge after he was arrested at his home and questioned by gardai who are probing financial irregularities at the rogue bank.

He was arrested by officers from the garda National Fraud Bureau under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act. Mr McAteer is one of several former executives at Anglo who took out directors’ loans which are being investigated.

It is the second time he has been arrested and questioned after further information came to light.

Although both banking bosses have previously been questioned, the legislation permits further questioning if new information is discovered.

That additional information was put to Mr McAteer at Irishtown garda station yesterday.

Meanwhile, Anglo chairman Sean FitzPatrick is expected to be questioned again within days after fraud detectives arrested a former Anglo director for a second time.

Gardai are also expected to reinterview Mr FitzPatrick and put new information to him. He has already been arrested and questioned twice to date, in March 2010 and then again in March of this year.

Last night Mr FitzPatrick declined to comment on the arrest of his former colleague, as did the family of Mr McAteer.

Anglo — which is now known as Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Limited (IBRC) — has pursued Mr FitzPatrick over more than €70m in unpaid directors’ loans.

Earlier this year the Irish Independent revealed that Mr McAteer had ringfenced his family home in Rathgar, Dublin, and his pension in case he stopped paying back his director’s loans.

The exclusion clause was allegedly contained in a side agreement to a multimillion-euro loan which Mr McAteer took out in January 2009 when the bank was in turmoil. The clause was revealed in court papers lodged in Ireland by ex-Anglo CEO David Drumm.

A number of other former senior Anglo officials may also be questioned and the interviews will complete the garda side of the investigation.

This has been conducted alongside the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) since February 2009. To date the ODCE has submitted three files to the DPP.

Criminal

The garda National Fraud Bureau has also submitted files to the DPP arising out of its inquiries into suspected criminal offences at Anglo.

A further comprehensive submission will be made by the gardai in the coming weeks after Mr McAteer, Mr FitzPatrick and a number of others have been re-interviewed.

Meanwhile, former Anglo chief executive David Drumm has ignored all requests to come back from the United States for interview. However, gardai have sent a file on him to the DPP and a prosecution can still be made if the evidence is there to warrant it.

The ODCE is expected to have substantially completed its inquiries by the end of the year when it sends in a file on Anglo’s financial statements in 2008 and previous years.

The DPP will examine the ODCE and garda files in tandem and decide whether there should be a prosecution.

- Independent.ie reporters

Irish people still mad as hell over fat cats

Ireland Calling by John Spain

Fianna FAILure

There was a very minor, very brief, but also very interesting court case here last week.  It involved a journalist I happen to know, a work colleague of mine for many years.

My friend, the former Irish Press reporter Des Nix, had been caught by the Gardai (police) in Dublin driving at a little above the speed limit, and he had been issued with the usual €80 automatic fine.

Dozens of these fines are issued every month for parking violations and minor speeding offenses.  You get the penalty notice in the post and if you pay on time you don’t have to go to court.  That’s what most people do.

But Des, a law abiding, solid citizen in every way like the vast majority of people here, decided that he was not paying.  Instead he wrote back to the Garda office and said that he was returning the speeding ticket and that he was refusing to pay the fine.

He was refusing to pay, he explained, not because he was denying that he had unintentionally exceeded the speed limit, but because money going to the state was now being used as “a slush fund to pay gangster bankers.”

He said in his letter to the fines office that his refusal to pay was “an act of civil disobedience.”
Having failed to pay the fine on time, he was summoned to court. He appeared before the judge last week, but the prosecuting Garda (police officer) failed to turn up in court on the day so the case was dropped.

After his court appearance Des told reporters that he thought it was unacceptable that the government should act as the “bag men” for the bankers and bondholders who are taking money from “people who never had any dealings with them.”

Which is precisely how the vast majority of people here feel. They deeply resent the fact that ordinary taxpayers here are now being saddled with the vast bill for the IMF-EU bailout, and that most of the money is being used to pay back the foreign banks and bondholders who gambled on the Irish property market and lost.

A huge chunk of the money that is raised in taxes here — and in all other sources of state revenue like my friend’s speeding ticket — will in the future be going to pay back the massive bailout from the IMF-EU.  Even paying the interest on the bailout money each year is going to take a significant amount of state revenue.

As we have pointed out here before, the primary reason for the €85 billion euro bailout is to prevent an Irish default and to enable our now state guaranteed banks to repay all the money that was pumped in here by the German and French banks and the bondholders who all wanted a piece of the action in the Irish boom.

Most ordinary people here feel that this is unjust and unfair.  They deeply resent the fact that so much of their tax money in the years ahead will be used in this way instead of being spent on schools, hospitals and all the other services provided by the state which are in need of improvement.

They deeply resent the fact that so much money is going to be sucked out of the Irish economy every year at a time when we desperately need it at home to get things moving again.

In fact resentment is far too mild a word to describe the feelings of the majority of people here about what is happening.  A better description would be seething with anger.

People here mistakenly believed that the new government would be able to offer an alternative solution to the deal negotiated by the previous administration.  Now they have woken up to the truth.

Now they realize that the new government is not able to offer any alternative to the economic crucifixion of the country.  And they are boiling with rage as a result.

Talk to anyone here right now and that fury comes pouring out.  Some people talk about leaving the country rather than staying and seeing their taxes being used to pay off the billions the banks owe.

But others — a small but growing minority — talk about staying and refusing

…..read more here >>>