Gormley claims banks told ‘blatant lies’
He was speaking after NAMA chief executive Brendan McDonagh was accused of performing a major U-turn by saying there is no evidence banks behaved criminally in their dealings with the agency.
The chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen, said this was very different to what Mr McDonagh had indicated in a recent committee hearing when he said he agreed with suggestions that banks had provided misleading information.
Mr McDonagh will be called before the committee in early January where he will be asked to clarify the issue.
In an interview published yesterday, Mr Gormley said: “In relation to the banks and what they told us about their finances, they were either hopelessly misinformed or else told us blatant lies. It is very hard not to come to the conclusion that they lied to us.”
In a PAC hearing last month, Fianna Fáil TD Michael McGrath said there were serious question marks about the information the banks had provided to NAMA about the quality of their loans.
“It needs to be investigated by the gardaí and the Director of Corporate Enforcement,” Mr McGrath said, adding that there was a “a clear, systematic pattern of false and misleading information being fed into NAMA.”
Mr McDonagh said he did not disagree with anything Mr McGrath had said, adding: “I can assure the deputy that we have established the facts and will make that information available to any regulatory authority, if appropriate.”
But it emerged last week that Mr McDonagh has told Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield that NAMA has no evidence the banks engaged in criminal conduct. NAMA believes it is a matter for the Central Bank, and not the agency itself, to determine if there was any case for the participatory institutions to answer in relation to information it provided.
Mr Gormley, whose party hopes to see legislation on corporate donations passed in the Dáil before it departs office, said it was time for all political parties to reveal how much they received in donations from developers and bankers in recent years.
“We are absolutely intent on having the amount given by bankers and developers called to account. Our party wants declared every corporate donation that banks and developers were giving to political parties. Any political party that took donations from developers, or the banks, or builders, must come clean. Come clean and put your hands up. How much did you get, from who and when?”
