David Drumm to spend Christmas in jail after bail denied

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm will spend Christmas and the following two months in the maximum-security prison in Plymouth, south of Boston, after being denied bail.

A spokeswoman for Plymouth County Correctional Facility confirmed that they were holding the 49-year-old former banker.

He is being held in custody pending his extradition in a Boston court in early March 2016.

The Dubliner’s prisoner identity number is “68201.” The all-male prison holds about 1,000 county, state and federal inmates. Mr Drumm’s arrest and custody was handled by US Marshals, a federal agency.

The former banker has been held in several facilities in New England since his arrest at home in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on October 10th on an Irish extradition request.

Mr Drumm is sought in Ireland to face 33 criminal charges concerning transactions carried out while he was in charge at Anglo.

The facility in Plymouth is 60km south of the John Joseph Moakley Court in Boston, home to the Massachusetts District Court where Mr Drumm is contesting his extradition.

The facility near the Massachusetts coast is equidistant between Boston and the summer home Mr Drumm owned in the resort of Chatham in Cape Cod, about an hour’s drive from the prison.

‘Uncomfortable’

Famous former inmates include “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid, Irish-American Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger and former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor who was imprisoned for war crimes.

Refusing Mr Drumm bail, Boston magistrate judge Donald Cabell noted in his ruling on Thursday that the applicant found the “conditions of his confinement uncomfortable” which made it difficult to meet his lawyers.

The judge concluded that this, among other reasons, did not amount to a special circumstance meriting his release.

Mr Drumm is being held in a part of the Plymouth facility that does not allow contact visits. Visits are limited to 30 minutes and visitors are separated from him by thick glass and must converse by telephone.

He is permitted to have five people on his pre-approved visitor list and visits are allowed seven days a week.

The Plymouth prison has single cells, but it is understood that Mr Drumm is not being held in one of these units and that he has contact with the wider prison population.

On Thursday he lodged papers with the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, formally commencing his second appeal against his rejected attempt to be declared bankrupt in the US.

Judge Cabell said that bankruptcy court’s finding that Mr Drumm intentionally failed to disclose substantial assets to investigators in order to mislead them had a bearing on his decision not to grant bail.