Gardaí to continue questioning former Anglo executive

Fraud squad detectives were tonight given extra time to question a second Anglo Irish Bank executive over alleged financial irregularities at the now nationalised lender.

The bank’s former finance director and chief risk officer William McAteer was arrested after a search of his Dublin home early today.

He was taken to Irishtown Garda Station in the south inner city, where he can now be held for a further 12 hours under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act.

The arrest comes just days after ex-Anglo Irish chief Sean FitzPatrick, 61, was taken into custody following a dawn raid at his luxury home in Greystones, Co Wicklow.

He was questioned for about 24 hours before being released without charge from Bray Garda Station.

Mr FitzPatrick was the first person to be arrested since the bank’s headquarters at St Stephen’s Green in central Dublin was raided by the garda fraud squad and investigators from the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement last February.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said the investigation into Anglo Irish was a thorough one.

“Clearly, justice has to take its course and I have always pointed out that the Garda investigation here and the investigation conducted by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement is wide-ranging and comprehensive,” he added.

Earlier this month Anglo Irish Bank began legal action against Mr FitzPatrick to try to recover loans of €70m.

Over a period of eight years up to 2007, Mr FitzPatrick temporarily transferred borrowings with Anglo Irish Bank to another bank before the annual report was audited.

It later emerged the loans reached as much as €129m at one point in 2007.

The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement and the Financial Regulator are also investigating whether Anglo Irish used more than €7bn of short-term deposits from Irish Life & Permanent to mask big customer deposit withdrawals

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The Government has already pumped €4bn into Anglo Irish since it was bailed out last January.

Expected record losses to be announced later this month could see the taxpayer being asked to inject more cash into the nationalised lender.

Anglo Irish is also expected to transfer around €28bn of loans to the State’s “bad bank”, the National Asset Management Agency.