THE GOVERNMENT needs to consult the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) and Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigations with a view to bringing a “string of prosecutions” against fraudulent members of the “banking elite”, the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) has said.
Association president Paschal Feeney said the asset-stripping powers of Cab now needed to be used to “recoup all of the monies squirreled away by members of the so-called ‘Golden Circle’ ”.
In a strongly worded address to the opening session of AGSI’s annual conference in Athlone, Co Westmeath, Mr Feeney said he believed what had occurred in the banking sector was fraud, with the Government having failed to regulate “lunatic lending”.
The section of his address which dealt with the banking sector was titled “white-collar crime”.
He said executives motivated by greed had paid themselves “huge, unrealistic salaries”, lending developers money “they stood not a chance in hell of getting back”. They had brought the country “almost to its knees”.
He told delegates: “If we find our current legislation is not strong enough, then the Government should consult with the Garda Fraud Squad and the Cab to ensure that any new laws enacted are effective and that they act to cure this cancer in our financial affairs. If our present laws are sufficient then why are we not seeing a string of prosecutions of our banking elite?”
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said it was not for him to direct Cab in relation to banking investigations. This was a matter for Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy and director of corporate enforcement Paul Appleby.
Mr Feeney told delegates that morale within An Garda Síochána was low and that the jobs of Garda members were “grinding to a halt”. Members had suffered an income levy, pensions levy, a 25 per cent cut in allowances and subsistence payments and an embargo on recruitment, appointments and promotions. At the same time “overtime is practically gone”, he said.
The service to the public would suffer most.
“Ask any sergeant or inspector in the country and they will be able to tell you of reduced personnel to send to house calls, or to detail for traffic duty, or to allocate to a community policing unit. Worse still is the lack of personnel to staff the public order units at weekends to deal with the street rows after the pubs and discos close.”
The freeze in Garda recruitment would bring Ireland into “very dangerous waters indeed”, given the rise in gangland crime and the drugs trade, resulting in numerous gangland murders.
Mr Feeney criticised the handling by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) of complaints against gardaí policing a Shell to Sea protest in Co Mayo in June 2007. He said while only 18 members of the force were at the scene of the disturbance being investigated, some 68 members – most of whom were making their way to the area or had been stood down when the disturbance took place – were served with notices of the 12 complaints lodged with GSOC.
A spokesman for GSOC said those gardaí contacted were written to as “potential witnesses”. He said most members had only a brief involvement with the GSOC investigation and were cleared of any wrongdoing. GSOC had at all times taken a “fair, proportionate and professional approach”.