David Drumm’s Boston bankruptcy trial set for May 21st

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm, architect of the illegal Maple 10 loans-for-shares scheme, faces his own unrelated trial in the US next month.

A bankruptcy court in Boston will determine at a trial due to start on May 21st whether Mr Drumm can walk away with a fresh financial start from debts of more than €10 million. The case arises from a legal challenge taken by his former bank, now known as Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.

Mr Drumm, who has been living in the US for the past five years, has refused to return to Ireland to face questioning about his role at Anglo.

A lawyer representing Pat Whelan, who has been convicted by a jury of illegal lending to buy shares, described Mr Drumm's absence from the trial as " Hamlet without the prince".

Loans
Mr Drumm has been embroiled in legal proceedings in the US courts since October 2010 when he voluntarily filed for bankruptcy after failing to negotiate a debt settlement deal with Anglo. Most of his €8.5 million debts to the bank relate to loans borrowed to buy shares in the now defunct lender.

The State-owned bank claims in a legal challenge taken in August 2011 that he fraudulently failed to disclose money and property that he transferred to his wife. Mr Drumm has denied the allegations and is defending the action.

A separate legal action taken by his bankruptcy trustee Kathleen Dwyer, a court-appointed officer liquidating his assets, against his wife, Lorraine, was settled in 2012.

Ms Drumm agreed to pay almost $1 million from the sale of a house they owned in the seaside resort of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The property sold for almost €3 million. Their former home at Abington in Malahide, Co Dublin, was sold for €1.4 million in 2012, with part of the proceeds going to his creditors.

The former banker’s family home is located in Wellesley, a wealthy suburb almost 20 miles west of Boston where Mr Drumm ran the bank’s US operations before returning to Ireland in 2003. He took over from Seán FitzPatrick as Anglo chief executive in January 2005 and resigned in December 2008.

Mr Drumm has used the offices of scaffolding company Safway Atlantic, in an industrial estate in Carlstadt, New Jersey, about 15 miles west of New York city, although the company says he is not an employee of Safway Atlantic.

A woman who answered the company’s main switchline phone at the New Jersey offices yesterday said Mr Drumm was not there and transferred the call to a voicemail.