Only four withdrawal dockets could be found for 275 cash withdrawals worth €173,800 made from a customer account at Anglo Irish Bank, the trial of three former officials at the bank has been told.
Patrick Peake, head of fraud prevention at Anglo and its successor, the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), agreed that as part of an investigation in 2010 he could not find any more back-up documentation for the transactions, which involved an account of John Peter O’Toole, brother-in-law of former chairman of the bank Seán FitzPatrick.
Continuing his evidence at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, he agreed with Dominic McGinn SC, for the prosecution, that most of those withdrawals were made at a cash desk of the Dublin branch of the bank on St Stephen's Green.
Not guilty
Aoife Maguire
(60) of Rothe Abbey, South Circular Road, Kilmainham, Dublin,
Bernard Daly
(65) of Collins Avenue West, Whitehall, Dublin and
Tiarnan O'Mahoney
(54) of Glen Pines, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow have been charged with trying to hide accounts, connected to Mr FitzPatrick, from Revenue between March 2003 and December 2004. They have pleaded not guilty.
Mr McGinn took Mr Peake, who was appointed in April 2010 to investigate accounts removed from the bank’s computer system, through a series of screen shots and documents shown in the courtroom.
Mr Peake agreed they showed there were payments into a current account of Mr O’Toole from an Anglo account in the name of Seán and Triona FitzPatrick on a monthly basis for €410 or IR£330.
He also agreed he found a paper instruction for the payments in the bank’s archives signed “Mary O’Toole”, whom the court had heard was Mr FitzPatrick’s mother-in-law. Mr Peake agreed he could not find Ms O’Toole listed as an account-holder.
He also said “theoretically” the payment was coming from the FitzPatricks’ account, so it should have been signed by one of them, not by a recipient.
“I suppose that is just another unusual feature, is it?” Mr McGinn asked.
“Yes it is,” Mr Peake said.
Dockets
He agreed there were 275 cash withdrawals of €410 or IR£330 from Mr O’Toole’s current account with only four withdrawal dockets found in the archives.
One of the dockets, dated August 18th, 2004, was signed “Mary O’Toole” and a bank stamp, “Mandate checked”, was signed by a staff member. Mr Peake said this signified a staff member had reviewed the signature to see if it matched with one on the account mandate.
“But the mandate didn’t have Mary O’Toole on it,” Mr McGinn said.
“Correct,” Mr Peake said.
Mr McGinn also took him through documents related to two companies, Lock Ltd and Susie Ltd. Lock Ltd had an address at 69 Athol Street, Douglas, Isle of Man, the address of the former office of Anglo Irish Bank Corporation, Isle of Man. Mr Peake confirmed documents showed Susie Ltd was registered in the Isle of Man, and its directors and signatories were “in the main part” directors or employees at Anglo Isle of Man. He could not ascertain the beneficiary.
Another transaction showed a transfer of IR£71,000 on August 31st, 1999, from an account named “Sean and Triona FitzPatrick” to “Susie Ltd”.He agreed another screen shot showed a transfer of $22,460 from an account named Mr FitzPatrick, labelled as going to Susie Ltd, but it appeared in a bank statement of Lock Ltd.
