Fraud saga acts as a costly lesson for all financial regulators

It may seem like a stretch but there is a direct correlation between the AIB annual general meeting in 2001 and the conviction of fraudsters Achilleas Kallakis and Alexander Williams in the Southwark Crown Court yesterday.

Twelve years ago the country’s biggest bank had its annual gathering in the RDS. The shareholders were restive. They lacerated the management team for letting the arriviste Anglo Irish Bank eat its lunch. The latter’s profits were surging on the back of runaway property lending.

After the very public dressing down, AIB chief executive Michael Buckley and his fellow senior executives, decided on a change of tack — one that would prove fatal. They might have come to the party late, but there was a lot of money to be made from the gravity-defying property markets and the Ballsbridge-headquartered bank intended to cash in.