Transcripts from Seán FitzPatrick trial to be made public ‘in weeks’

Closed transcripts from the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick are to be made public "in weeks, rather than months".

The transcripts form part of a report into the “investigative failures” in Mr FitzPatrick’s historic legal case, the longest criminal trial in the State’s history.

Judge John Aylmer last month allowed a motion from the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, for access to four transcript dates from the trial, in which investigators were criticised.

Lawyers for Mr FitzPatrick had indicated earlier that they would object to a more general request for access to all redacted transcripts from the 2017 trial. Judge Aylmer, sitting at Cavan Circuit Court, granted access to just the four days considered relevant to the conduct of the ODCE.

Mr FitzPatrick had been accused of 27 counts of financial wrongdoing but the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) botched the investigation to such a degree the case was ultimately thrown out.

Denied wrongdoing

Mr FitzPatrick, who resigned from the bank in 2008, had denied all wrongdoing and was found not guilty of 27 alleged offences under the 1990 Companies Act.

He was charged with 22 counts of making misleading, false or deceptive statements and with five counts of furnishing false information from 2002 to 2007.

At the conclusion of the case in May last year, Judge Aylmer directed a jury to acquit Mr FitzPatrick of all matters because of failings by the ODCE.

The outcry led to a Government-level review into the ODCE’s role in the trial, which had heard 126 days of evidence and legal argument over eight months.

While a spokesperson for the department would not give a timeframe for the report’s publication, a source confirmed that the report would “go public in weeks, rather than months”.

“It’s high-profile, there is pressure on it, and it’s being worked on for an ‘ASAP’ release,” the source said.

Legal argument

Large swathes of the trial of Mr FitzPatrick were taken up in legal argument in the absence of the jury, and so could not be made public at the time.

Judge Aylmer directed the trial jury to return not guilty verdicts as potentially valuable documents had been shredded and witnesses from auditors Ernst & Young had been coached, meaning their evidence was contaminated, which deprived Mr FitzPatrick of his right to a fair trial.

The day after Mr FitzPatrick's acquittal, then taoiseach Enda Kenny agreed that the case was a "catastrophic failure", a "damning indictment of the ODCE building a case against Mr FitzPatrick and not investigating the facts". He said at the time that if a minister behaved in such a manner, they would face "instant dismissal".