Five years after he retired in 1989, a number of Allied Irish Bank customers in the UK claimed Mr Timothy McHale had "interfered with" their accounts.
AIB established an "immediate and thorough" investigation, the bank said in 1997. "This investigation established that a small number of customers' accounts had been interfered with."
The bank, which is believed to have paid out £800,000 to put matters right, indicated it regarded the case as closed.
When the Mail on Sunday first published the allegation in October 1997, Mr McHale denied the allegation to that newspaper: "I don't know what you are talking about. I deny these allegations completely."
Customers were said to be satisfied with the measures taken by the bank and no further action was expected to be taken by British police, The Irish Times reported at the time.
Later in the same month, Mr McHale's name figured prominently in a case in which a customer, Mr Gordon Lewis, claimed Allied Irish Bank in London had lost thousands of pounds belonging to him.
The Central London County Court cleared AIB of the allegation, and the judge dismissed claims by Mr Lewis that Mr McHale had appropriated the cash.
The judge said he found Mr Lewis "confused" and "confusing" and he was given three months to sell his home to pay AIB and other creditors.
The judge said: "Even allowing that Mr McHale may have been a less reliable official than most in the bank, I cannot support these allegations."
Mr McHale looked after Mr Lewis's accounts for nine years until his retirement. At the time of the trial, he was retired and living in Lahinch, Co Clare, where he could not be subpoenaed.
During the trial, Mr Lewis claimed Mr McHale advised him to open an offshore account in the Isle of Man. "Mr McHale said that he looked after several people's accounts and he kept them in his drawer, especially the Isle of Man accounts," Mr Lewis said.
"Mr McHale had said to me if there were any deposits for him he would like them in cash, because it would be much easier to do that," he added. "Mr McHale said it should be in cash because it is very awkward to do anything else in the Isle of Man."
Mr Lewis said that after Mr McHale left the bank, it took AIB four years to find the Isle of Man account.