Shatter says Drumm should return to answer Anglo questions

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm should return to Ireland to face questions by investigators probing fraud at the failed lender, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has said.

The Minister said Mr Drumm needs to co-operate with gardaí instead of protesting about media coverage of the bank’s bailout.

Mr Drumm yesterday accused politicians and senior officials of making him scapegoat for the banking crisis and criticised the “drip, drip, drip” release of secret phone recordings made at the toxic lender in 2008 at the height of the banking crisis.

“I do notice that Mr Drumm, from the Unites States, is now protesting at the coverage that is taking place within the Irish media,” said Mr Shatter.

"I do believe he should cooperate with An Garda Síochána as he has been requested to do and make himself available to answer any questions that remain to be answered in the context of the investigation that is taking place."

Mr Drumm, who is from Skerries in north Co Dublin, moved to the US after Anglo collapsed. He has called for all of the tapes, emails and documents from all banks, and not just Anglo, to be made public, specifically including all of the conversations involving Anglo senior management, the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank of Ireland.

Mr Shatter said the taped conversations of several Anglo executives reveal their contempt for the financial regulatory system and a lack of concern as to how their conduct might impact generally on people throughout the country, on the country itself, on its reputation and on the banking system.

“Quite clearly they had an approach that has annoyed substantially and shocked many people,” he added.

The latest transcripts of tapes, published by the Irish Independent, reveals head of treasury John Bowe claimed that that the Central Bank and Financial Regulator were "effectively egging us on - for Irish banks to help each other".

In conversation with compliance executive Fiachre O’Neill, Mr Bowe planned to craft a document to convince his superiors that a deal to improve the bank’s balance sheet by seven billion euro was above board.

In the weeks before Anglo was nationalised in January 2009, Mr Bowe scrambles to explain the deal with IL&P in 2008 that shifted money in a circle to inflate their deposits.

PA