Tackling white-collar crime in Ireland poses many challenges

It is important that we commit to law reform and allocate resources to ensure effective investigation and prosecution, says Shane Kilcommins.

Judge John Aylmer made the decision earlier this week to acquit former Anglo Irish bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick in the Circuit Criminal Court of 27 charges of misleading the bank’s auditors and furnishing false information about multi-million euro loans to him and to people connected to him between 2002 and 2007. He refused to allow a jury to make a determination of innocence or guilt as a result of ‘fundamental errors’ in the investigation, particularly in relation to the taking of witness statements and the shredding of evidence.

On the one hand, the judgment reflects the need for our criminal process to ensure, as far as possible, the quality, integrity and legitimacy of the information emanating from an investigation. The procedural demand for accurate fact and verdict findings is woven into the framework of the Irish criminal process. In addition to ensuring accuracy, it is designed to protect individual freedoms, check abuses of power and preserve basic fairness in State-accused relations. The justification for these procedural safeguards is rooted in the notion that a wrongful conviction is a deep injustice and a fundamental moral harm. When these safeguards are breached, it is difficult, if not impossible, to stand over the integrity of the investigation process.