Fingleton calls for Central Bank inquiry to be postponed

Michael Fingleton has demanded a Central Bank inquiry into his stewardship of the failed Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) be postponed until well into next year while he mounts a legal challenge.

Public hearings started on Wednesday in the bank’s inquiry into five former directors and senior managers at INBS. They face up to seven charges of alleged regulatory breaches dating between August 2004 and September 2008, the month when the Government issued its bank guarantee to save the Irish financial system.

Mr Fingleton, who represented himself at the hearing, told the three-member panel he was approaching his 80th year and was under medical supervision.

Last January, the High Court rejected an attempt by Mr Fingleton to block the inquiry's work. His appeal against that decision is due to be heard in June 2017.

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He asked the the inquiry to postpone its hearings until after his appeal had been heard, in the interest of “fairness and natural justice”.

Separate litigation

Mr Fingleton, who led INBS for 38 years before its nationalisation in 2010 and subsequent winding up, also cited separate litigation being pursued against him by

Irish Bank Resolution Corporation

(IBRC). He said IBRC was suing him for €6 million and it would be “difficult to deal with both cases contemporaneously”.

Mr Fingleton said he had no assistance available to deal with the volume of documentation involved in the inquiry, describing this as “totally unfair”. Some 110,000 documents have been submitted to the panel for consideration.

Mr Fingleton also said many statements arising from 21 interviews conducted by the Central Bank were defamatory and he would challenge each and every one of them.

In reply, counsel for the Central Bank said Mr Fingleton’s claims had already been aired in the High Court, which had rejected his case, while there was no evidence to support his health claims.

The other former INBS executives before the inquiry are former chairman Michael Walsh, its ex-company secretary Stan Purcell, Gary McCollum, who led its lending into the UK from a base in Belfast, and Tom McMenamin, a former commercial lending manager.

Mr McCollum and Mr McMenamin did not attend the hearing, nor were they represented at the inquiry. The panel heard how the Central Bank made attempts to notify them of the hearings but received no return communications.

Not present

Mr Walsh was not present but was represented by senior counsel. He has made an application to have the inquiry terminated and this will be heard by the panel on December 13th and 14th.

The charges levelled against the former INBS executives include failing to ensure that commercial loan applications were processed, and later approved, in accordance with internal policies.

In addition, it is alleged that INBS’s credit committee failed to perform certain functions in accordance with the building society’s rules and that it failed to ensure that the establishment of profit share agreements was subject to a formal credit risk policy.

Mr Fingleton, Mr McMenamin and Mr Walsh deny each of the charges made against them, while Mr McCollum and Mr Purcell have made no admissions.

In a statement issued late on Thursday night, Mr McMenamin claimed he had set out his position in relation to the inquiry for the Central Bank “in considerable, written detail”. He also said he believed he had been “wrongly included”in the inquiry.

The inquiry’s planned sitting for Thursday has been cancelled and it will resume on December 13th.