Government’s ‘soft stance’ on white-collar crime criticised

THE Government’s soft stance on corporate crime has been exposed by the failure to provide extra staff to the Director of Corporate Enforcement in recent years, Fine Gael claimed.

The party’s enterprise spokesperson, Leo Varadkar, yesterday accused the Government of repeatedly refusing requests by the director Paul Appleby for more resources between 2005 and 2007.

Mr Varadkar claimed Tuesday’s raid by the ODCE and the Garda fraud squad on Anglo Irish Bank highlighted the Government’s failure to tackle white-collar crime.

“Instead of vigorously pursuing white-collar crime, Fianna Fáil tolerated a weak financial regulator,” he said.

His comments come as the latest annual review by Mr Appleby showed a record number of alleged breaches of the Companies Acts last year.

Mr Appleby said there was a notable increase in the number of cases reported by members of the public, regulators and as a result of investigations by his own officials.

One of the prosecutions secured by the ODCE resulted in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court imposing the most serious penalty ever for a breach of company legislation when the director of a Dublin advertising agency was given a suspended two-year jail sentence and fined e34,000.

Stuart Fogarty of Aubrey Fogarty Associates was also ordered to carry out 240 hours of community service and disqualified as a director for six months.

The first case of a company director given a custodial sentence was also recorded last year when Donal Harrington of Nurney, Co Kildare, was given a six-month jail term after acting as director of a company, despite being disqualified by the High Court.