The Big Bailout of the Eurozone (Another crisis coming? - Seriously)

[Declan]

FORMER FINANCE DIRECTOR of Anglo Irish Bank Willie McAteer has pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining an €8.4 million loan from the bank.

McAteer (66) of Greenrath, Tipperary town, Tipperary entered the plea this morning at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court ahead of his trial, which was due to start in January 2017.

McAteer admitted obtaining a loan of €8,426,307 from Anglo on 29 September 2008 which he secured against his shares in the bank. According to the indictment, he then used the money to pay off a personal loan he obtained from Bank of Ireland which resulted in a gain for himself and a loss to Anglo.

Judge Melanie Greally allowed McAteer to remain on bail with the consent of the prosecution and set a sentence date for 12 January 2017. She also urged caution in the reporting of the matter in the media.

The charge against McAteer states that "in breach of section 297 of the Companies Act, 1963, that you, on 29 September 2008, were knowingly a party to the carrying on of the business of a company, for a fraudulent purpose, the granting of Anglo Irish Bank Corp PLC of a loan to yourself in the amount of Eur8,426,307 secured only upon your shares in Anglo Irish Bank Corp PLC so that you could discharge a loan to Bank Of Ireland in that amount you were personally liable, caused a gain to yourself, a loss to bank Anglo Irish Bank Corp PLC."

Meanwhile the human reality  of the resulting recession is described on this morning's radio

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/12/19/id-give-anything-just-to-sleep-to-not-be-thinking-constantly-not-be-worrying/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=web&utm_content=latest_comments#comment-1723951

[Hound]

The European Commission have finally given the full detailed 130 page reasoning behind their 13 billion state aid ruling against Apple and Ireland.

My first comment is that this should have been the first the public heard of it instead of drip feeding info which led to a lot of wrong assumptions and people arguing for and against it without having the full detail, so everyone who commented on it has effectively been talking ballix, including me (because we didn't know the facts).

Turns out that EC are not arguing that these 2 Apple companies are tax resident in Ireland. It is accepted by all sides that the Head Office is not in Ireland, and any income associated with the Head Office is not taxable in Ireland. And there is an Irish branch and all income associated with the Irish branch is taxable at 12.5%.

The key is whether the technology owned by these companies (the companies licenced the IP from Apple US) is in Head Office or in Irish Branch. When Revenue gave their ruling to Apple, Apple had told them the IP would never be in Ireland and the ruling was given on that basis - which was wholly reasonably by Irish Revenue. However, EC raises the good point, as to whether that actually happened. There seems to be no real evidence of Head Office managing/owning the IP - which was pretty poor on Apple's part, if that's true. So if it's not in Head Office, EC's view is that it must be in Ireland (because the company clearly has the IP as it licences it in from the US, and therefore it has to be either in Head Office or Branch or shared between them).

So I've gone from being 90%+ sure that Ireland/Apple would win the appeal to being 50/50 on it. I'm not sure Ireland have done much wrong, they gave the ruling in good faith, but arguably Apple didn't follow through on what they said they'd do. Perhaps you could say Ireland should have audited Apple's position more that they did.

So overall I think there is now a reasonable chance Apple have severely underpaid their Irish tax (assuming the EC are correct in saying the board minutes of Head Office show no management of IP in all the 10+ years under review). However, I'm still not even slightly convinced that it's state aid. This wasn't at all a special deal given to Apple to give them an advantage in their sector. If Revenue had throught the IP would be in Ireland, then they simply would never have given the ruling they did give.

[seafoid]

Le Pen vs Macron

French women are thought by many Brits to be the epitome of sophistication but Le Pen is a real tr**p.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-5BcvZAzng

[Rossfan]

Is there any extreme right wing racist fascist xenophobe  who isn't a tr**p??

[Hardy]

Is there any extreme right wing racist fascist xenophobe  who isn't a tr**p??

Whitey seems like a fella you could have a pint with.

[seafoid]

From the FT. Draghi went to the Dutch parliament

   Confronted with the possibility of the Netherlands quitting Europe's monetary union by Eurosceptic MP Thierry Baudet, an angry Mr Draghi said: "The euro is irrevocable. This is the treaty. I will not speculate on something that has no basis

Asked what would happen if a eurozone member needed to restructure its debt, he said: "We don't want to speculate on the probability of things that have no chance of happening. Why are you asking me that?"


He should join Fianna Fail !

[Declan]

See Seanie has just been acquitted of all 126 charges - The great and the good continue to roll on

[Avondhu star]

See Seanie has just been acquitted of all 126 charges - The great and the good continue to roll on

Dont worry about Seanie. He will be allright. Mrs Murphy has claimed two extra bale of briquettes on her Winter Fuel Allowance. Leo will make an example of her.

[FermGael]

That's unbelievable.

[Rossfan]

I presume the thing wasn't proved beyond reasonable doubt??
Any way he had his minions to do the dirty work and  other doubt didn't put any instructions in writing guides, email etc.
Fcukn Cnut😠

[Declan]

I presume the thing wasn't proved beyond reasonable doubt??

Didn't even get to a jury decision

AFTER THE LONGEST-running criminal trial in the history of the State, Seán Fitzpatrick has been acquitted of all charges.
This morning – the 126th day of proceedings – presiding judge John Aylmer said he will direct the jury to acquit the 68-year-old on all counts.
His ruling came after lengthy submissions from the defence arguing that the case should not go before the jury because of flaws in the investigation process and in the prosecution case.
Lawyers for the Director of Public Prosecution argued that the trial should continue and should be decided by the jury.
Judge Aylmer said that after considering the arguments from both sides he had decided that in the interests of the accused's constitutional right to a fair trial he would direct the jury to find the former banking executive not guilty.

The former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank was on trial in relation to an alleged failure to disclose the extent of loans to the bank's auditors. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The jury will be told tomorrow that all charges have been dropped and will be dismissed.
Judge Aylmer said that the investigation, carried out by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), fell short of an unbiased, impartial, balanced investigation that an accused is entitled to.
He said the investigation failed to seek out evidence as to the innocence as well as the guilt of the accused.
He said the most fundamental error was the manner in which the ODCE set about taking statements from witnesses. He said this involved coaching of witnesses, contamination of their statements from third parties such as solicitors for the auditors and cross-contamination of their statements between other witnesses.
Judge Aylmer also pointed to the extraordinary circumstances in which the ODCE lead investigator, Kevin O'Connell had admitted destroyed potentially relevant documentary evidence. This happened during legal argument in the first trial in May 2015 and emerged during that process.
That trial was then stopped and the retrial of FitzPatrick began last September. It was scheduled to last three months but quickly became bogged down in weeks of legal argument in the absence of the jury.
They claimed that two key witnesses from Ernst&Young, Anglo's former auditors, were coached by investigators.
They also argued that the statements by these witnesses were put together by the investigators as well as by lawyers for Ernst&Young. Finally they said that entire sections from one statement ended up in the other statement.
The prosecution had alleged that FitzPatrick of Whitshed Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow had failed to disclose to the bank's auditor Ernst and Young the details of director's loans he received from Anglo between November 2002 and February 2008.
He pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act. These include 22 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and five charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007. The DPP had dropped some of these charges in the last four weeks.
The prosecution came on foot of an investigation by the ODCE that began shortly after the full size of FitzPatrick's personal loans emerged in December 2008. Between 2005 and 2007 the loans from the bank linked to the chairman had quadrupled to around €122 million.
The revelations led to FitzPatrick resigning as chairman.


And what will the consequences within EY, ODCE and DPP be of this - SFA

[macdanger2]

See Seanie has just been acquitted of all 126 charges - The great and the good continue to roll on

Sounds like the investigators made a complete balls of it. Whether through incompetence or purposely remains to be seen

[magpie seanie]

That's depressing reading. I think as a country we needed this pr1ck to go down.

[trueblue1234]

Does that not just make you despair of this country? As corrupt as f%&k.

[Avondhu star]

I presume the thing wasn't proved beyond reasonable doubt??

Didn't even get to a jury decision

AFTER THE LONGEST-running criminal trial in the history of the State, Seán Fitzpatrick has been acquitted of all charges.
This morning – the 126th day of proceedings – presiding judge John Aylmer said he will direct the jury to acquit the 68-year-old on all counts.
His ruling came after lengthy submissions from the defence arguing that the case should not go before the jury because of flaws in the investigation process and in the prosecution case.
Lawyers for the Director of Public Prosecution argued that the trial should continue and should be decided by the jury.
Judge Aylmer said that after considering the arguments from both sides he had decided that in the interests of the accused's constitutional right to a fair trial he would direct the jury to find the former banking executive not guilty.

The former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank was on trial in relation to an alleged failure to disclose the extent of loans to the bank's auditors. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The jury will be told tomorrow that all charges have been dropped and will be dismissed.
Judge Aylmer said that the investigation, carried out by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), fell short of an unbiased, impartial, balanced investigation that an accused is entitled to.
He said the investigation failed to seek out evidence as to the innocence as well as the guilt of the accused.
He said the most fundamental error was the manner in which the ODCE set about taking statements from witnesses. He said this involved coaching of witnesses, contamination of their statements from third parties such as solicitors for the auditors and cross-contamination of their statements between other witnesses.
Judge Aylmer also pointed to the extraordinary circumstances in which the ODCE lead investigator, Kevin O'Connell had admitted destroyed potentially relevant documentary evidence. This happened during legal argument in the first trial in May 2015 and emerged during that process.
That trial was then stopped and the retrial of FitzPatrick began last September. It was scheduled to last three months but quickly became bogged down in weeks of legal argument in the absence of the jury.
They claimed that two key witnesses from Ernst&Young, Anglo's former auditors, were coached by investigators.
They also argued that the statements by these witnesses were put together by the investigators as well as by lawyers for Ernst&Young. Finally they said that entire sections from one statement ended up in the other statement.
The prosecution had alleged that FitzPatrick of Whitshed Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow had failed to disclose to the bank's auditor Ernst and Young the details of director's loans he received from Anglo between November 2002 and February 2008.
He pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act. These include 22 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and five charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007. The DPP had dropped some of these charges in the last four weeks.
The prosecution came on foot of an investigation by the ODCE that began shortly after the full size of FitzPatrick's personal loans emerged in December 2008. Between 2005 and 2007 the loans from the bank linked to the chairman had quadrupled to around €122 million.
The revelations led to FitzPatrick resigning as chairman.


And what will the consequences within EY, ODCE and DPP be of this - SFA

Promotions and bonuses once they get one Patsy to retire early on health grounds with a suitable pension and lump sum