Former bank executive ‘did not consider’ how to pay Revenue

A FORMER executive director of National Irish Bank, Barry Seymour, has agreed before the High Court that he had not considered how the Revenue Commissioners would be paid the potential liabilities resulting from DIRT not being deducted from certain accounts in the bank when it should have been.

While he was de facto chief executive of NIB between April 1994 and July 1996, Mr Seymour said he had not considered how the Revenue should be paid such liabilities and had not informed the NIB board that a possible liability to the Revenue was imminent.

The bank’s auditors KPMG had not indicated to himself or the bank that they had any belief that a DIRT theme audit report of early 1995 showed, as the inspectors who investigated the affairs of the bank later found, that there was a widespread problem with bogus non-resident accounts, he said.