McAteer arrested for second time in probe

A FORMER top official with Anglo Irish Bank was in custody last night after his second time being arrested for questioning in relation to a fraud investigation at the disgraced institution.

Willie McAteer was finance director at the bank until he resigned a week before it was taken over by the state at massive cost to the taxpayer to prevent its sudden collapse.

He was arrested at his home in Rathgar, Dublin, at around 8am yesterday.

Mr McAteer was taken to Irishtown Garda station in the city and held under section 10 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, which covers the offence of false accounting.

The 60-year-old was first arrested in March last year, along with Anglo’s former chairman Sean FitzPatrick. Both men were released without charge after a day’s questioning.

Detectives from the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation and officials from the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement are leading the investigation into practices at the bank.

They also want to speak to its former chief executive, David Drumm, who quit his job in late 2008 and fled to the US, where he is fighting bankruptcy proceedings.

Mr Drumm is also resisting calls to return to Ireland to explain what occurred at the bank.

Mr McAteer was also chief risk officer at Anglo at the time the so-called “golden circle” of businessmen were assembled to buy shares in the bank with Anglo-issued loans to artificially prop up share prices and prevent the full scale of the bank’s difficulties becoming known.

The bank is also being investigated for arranging to have billions of euro temporarily transferred to it from Irish Life and Permanent to artificially enhance its balance sheet, as well as for other financial irregularities.

Three files on alleged wrongdoing have already been forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions as a result of the two-and-a-half-year investigation.

However, no one has yet been charged with any offence.

Anglo Irish Bank was last month renamed Irish Bank Resolution Corporation as part of the process of winding it down and closing it by 2020.

The final cost to the taxpayer is expected to be between €25 billion and €30bn.