Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm has claimed politicians and senior officials are making him a scapegoat for the banking crisis.

In a lengthy statement released over the weekend Mr Drumm also criticised what he described as the “drip, drip, drip” release of phone recordings of conversations held by senior Anglo executives in 2008.

Mr Drumm called for all 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.

He said these would prove beyond doubt that there was “absolutely no strategy or desire to conceal Anglo’s financial position when the bank was seeking liquidity assistance from the Central Bank of Ireland, in its role as lender of last resort during the crisis.”

“I repeat, neither I nor anyone from Anglo Irish Bank ever requested that the Government issue a blanket guarantee,” he said.

“Nobody from Anglo Irish Bank was at the meeting at which it was decided to issue the guarantee.

“I will no longer allow myself to be made the scapegoat by politicians, politically connected former bankers and politically protected senior public servants who don’t want their role in the crisis to be highlighted.

He said the “intentional and systematic misinforming and misleading” of the public in relation to the Government guarantee has to stop if the public is to understand what happened.

Mr Drumm also takes issue with some of the reporting around the release of the tapes published by The Irish Independent and the Sunday Independent.

Referring to a report on the RTÉ website over the weekend which stated Anglo’s management had a “strategy to conceal Anglo’s true financial position”, Mr Drumm said this was completely untrue and unsupported by facts.

“There was absolutely no strategy or desire to conceal Anglo’s financial position when the bank was seeking liquidity assistance from the Central Bank of Ireland, in its role as lender of last resort during the crisis.”

“Has RTÉ asked John Hurley, Patrick Neary or Con Horan if they feel they were mislead about Anglo’s liquidity problems in September 2008?

“Has anyone at RTÉ asked former department of finance secretary general Kevin Cardiff if he feels HE was not fully informed by the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank about each bank’s liquidity situation in September 2008?

“After almost five years, has anyone from the Financial Regulator, the Central Bank or the Department of Finance ever even suggested they were mislead?

“Is RTÉ or any other Irish media outlet going to ask anyone who was there what actually happened or are you going to persist in pursuing me, when I obviously cannot help with these questions?

A spokeswoman for RTÉ said the broadcaster would not be commenting on Mr Drumm’s statement.

Mr Drumm also says it was important people “appreciate the circumstances under which the Independent Newspaper Group came into possession of these tapes”.

He said on RTÉ’s Marian Finucane show on June 30th, the Irish Independent newspaper stated it had received the tapes anonymously, they had been edited by an unknown source before being given to the newspaper and that although “thousands of hours” of recordings exist the newspaper only received “a few tapes”.

According to Mr Drumm these are extraordinary admissions.

“They chose to publish material which had been pre-edited by an unknown source, and then proceeded to further edit and dramatize the excerpts in order to deliberately fabricate the impression that Anglo Irish Bank forced the government to issue its blanket guarantee in September 2008, by misleading the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank about the extent of the bank’s liquidity problems.”

“This is simply not true and it is not supported in any way by the facts.”

Mr Drumm said it was not clear “what special interest is behind the leaking of the edited tape excerpts. “It goes without saying that the Irish Independent editors should not have allowed the newspaper to be used in this irresponsible not to mention libellous manner, just to sell its newspapers.”

A spokesman for Independent Newspapers said yesterday Mr Drumm’s assertions were not accurate, and added the group planned to publish more excerpts fom the tapes.