The Netherlands is a tax haven alongside Ireland, Malta and Cyprus, say MEPs

DutchNews, March 27, 2019

Photo: Joep Poulssen

Members of the European parliament have voted to include the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus on the official EU tax haven black list. 

However the motion, proposed by Dutch Labour MEP Paul Tang, will not have any affect on the listing because members states have to unanimously approve every inclusion, the Financieele Dagblad said on Wednesday. 

The official EU blacklist of places considered to facilitate tax evasion now comprises 15 countries, after 10, including Aruba, were added earlier this month. However, Tang said this did not go far enough, and referred to research last year by the European Commission which said the Netherlands cooperated with ‘aggressive tax planning’. 

Tang’s motion was passed by 408 to 205. 

Dutch junior finance minister Menno Snel said in a reaction that he was astonished by the vote. ‘The Netherlands has a leading position in the battle against international tax evasion,’ he told the FD.

Two former Anglo Irish Bank executives found guilty of handing out illegal loans

Patrick Whelan and William McAteer convicted in Dublin court of illegally lending to Maple 10 group of investors

The Guardian, Henry McDonald in Dublin, Thursday 17 April 2014

Patrick Whelan outside court. He was found gulity of illgeal lending.
Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Two former Anglo Irish Bank executives have been found guilty of handing out illegal loans from the financial institution whose reckless lending almost bankrupted Ireland.

Patrick Whelan and William McAteer were convicted in a Dublin court of illegally lending to the Maple 10 group of investors in the summer of 2008, in order to prop up the Anglo Irish share price and save the bank from collapse.

The 10-week-long trial of the directors transfixed a nation that had been forced to pay out more than €30bn (£25bn) in taxpayers' money to rescue the business.

It was the first time that any bankers faced charges under Section 60 of the Irish Republic's Companies Act, which bars banks from giving out loans to bolster their share price.

However the pair were found not guilty of orchestrating illegal loans from the bank to the family of Seán Quinn, Ireland's one-time richest man.

William McAteer leaves
court after the verdicts.

The pair will remain on bail until they are sentenced on 28 April, the Dublin circuit criminal court was told. Trial judge Martin Nolan warned that sentencing may go beyond that date.

Whelan, 52, the former head of lending in Ireland for Anglo Irish Bank, and McAteer, 63, its former chief risk and finance officer, could face up to five years in jail on each count.

The jury took nearly 17 hours to decide the fate of Whelan and McAteer as well as Seán FitzPatrick, former Anglo Irish chairman, whom they found not guilty on Wednesday.

The guilty verdicts for Whelan and McAteer were unanimous. Outside court the two men refused to talk to the media.

The judge had previously directed that 65-year-old FitzPatrick be found not guilty in connection with loans to Quinn, because of a lack of evidence. He also cleared Whelan of seven counts relating to the amendment of loan facility letters sent to the so-called Maple 10, a group of rich Irish investors allegedly used to buy out the Quinn family's shares in the bank.

Quinn and his family's legal battle with the Irish state over the collapse of Anglo Irish sustained a blow after the jury decided the loans given to them were legal.

The Quinns are engaged in a civil action against the state which rests on the supposed illegality of the loans from Anglo Irish.

The trial focused on moves by the bank to unravel Quinn's secret holding in the institution, built up via financial instruments called contracts for difference – or highly leveraged bets on an increase in the Anglo Irish share price.

By July 2008, with financial ruin looming for Anglo Irish Bank owing to excessive lending in the Irish property boom, Quinn controlled about 28% of the shares in the ailing bank.

The Maple 10 investors were lent a total of €450m by Anglo to buy about 10% of the shares that Quinn controlled. Quinn's wife and five children were also lent €169m to buy nearly 15% of the stock.

In February prosecutors said that executives at the bank decided to do something "absolutely illegal" by lending money to the individuals.

FitzPatrick, who was chief executive of the bank from 1986 to 2005, said his successor, David Drumm, told him the plan to lend the money was "kosher and above board", according to interview notes that police read out during the trial.

FitzPatrick's legal team had persuaded the jury that he was kept in the dark as to the identities of the Maple 10 investors and consequently would not have known the loans were illegal transactions.

The case was one of the most complex in European financial criminal history and lasted 43 days. More than 600 documents were read into the book of evidence and 54 witnesses were called during the trial in court number 19 of Dublin's circuit criminal court.

Attention will now turn to whether the Irish government will hold a public inquiry into the Anglo Irish scandal. In 2010 the state was ultimately forced to seek a €67.5bn bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the European commission and European Central Bank, which it exited last year.

Inside Anglo: the secret recordings

Exclusive: Tapes reveal the lies and deception that led to the bank bailout

Independent.ie, Paul Williams, Special Correspondent, 24 June 2013

TAPE RECORDINGS from inside doomed Anglo Irish Bank reveal for the first time how the bank's top executives lied to the Government about the true extent of losses at the institution.

The astonishing tapes show senior manager John Bowe, who had been involved in negotiations with the Central Bank, laughing and joking as he tells another senior manager, Peter Fitzgerald, how Anglo was luring the State into giving it billions of euro.

Mr Fitzgerald had not been involved in the negotiations with the Central Bank and has confirmed he was unaware of any strategy or intention to mislead the authorities. Mr Bowe, in a statement last night, categorically denied that he had misled the Central Bank.

The audio recordings are from the bank's own internal telephone system and date from the heart of the financial crisis that brought the State to its knees in September 2008.

Anglo itself was within days of complete meltdown – and in the years ahead would eat up €30bn of taxpayer money. Mr Bowe speaks about how the State had been asked for €7bn to bail out Anglo – but Anglo's negotiators knew all along this was not enough to save the bank.

The plan was that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop.

Mr Bowe is asked by Mr Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: "Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drumm) would say, 'picked it out of my arse'."

He also says: "If they (Central Bank) saw the enormity of it up front, they might decide they have a choice. You know what I mean?

"They might say the cost to the taxpayer is too high . . . if it doesn't look too big at the outset . . . if it looks big, big enough to be important, but not too big that it kind of spoils everything, then, then I think you have a chance. So I think it can creep up."

Mr Fitzgerald, the Director of Retail Banking, is heard saying: "Yeah. They've got skin in the game and that is the key." 

Mr Bowe's comments in the audio recording reveal that Anglo's strategy was to lure the State in, leaving taxpayers with no choice but to continue to provide loans to "support their money".

The recording also shows Mr Bowe and Mr Fitzgerald laughing as they say how there is no realistic chance of ever repaying the loans.

For the first time, taxpayers get an exclusive insight into the banking shenanigans that cost Ireland our sovereignty.

Related Article

Irish PM promises probe against bankers who duped government with figures 'picked from their arse' - New

Dutch authorities probe RBS over Irish banker's €4.9m Amsterdam house

Independent, Mark Keeman, 28 March 2013

John Hourican: bought property in prestigious area

ROYAL Bank of Scotland (RBS) says it is co-operating with Dutch authorities investigating the bank's €4.9m purchase of a house from top Irish banker John Hourican in 2009.

Mr Hourican, a Dubliner, stepped down as head of the UK state-owned bank's global capital markets arm last month in the wake of the Libor rigging scandal.

He was not implicated in the interest-rate manipulation but took the fall as the executive in overall charge of the division of RBS that was involved.

Now it's a €4.9m sale of Mr Hourican's former home that is being looked at by the Dutch authorities.

Questions have been raised in the Netherlands over the true value of the property at the time when it was sold to his empl-oyer, RBS, in 2009.

Mr Hourican had bought the former residence of the late Wim Duisenberg, a prominent Dutch politician and the first head of the European Central Bank, for €4.7m in 2007, when he was transferred by RBS to work as CFO of ABN Amro, a Dutch bank that had been bought by his employer.

In 2009, after the bank had recalled Mr Hourican to London, the home was sold to RBS for €4.9m.

RBS placed it on the market soon afterwards for €3.9m and tried to sell the property over a period of years.

However, it remained unsold, despite the fact that it's location on Amsterdam's Diepenbrockstraat, one of the capital's most sought-after and prestigious residential addresses.

The bank eventually offloaded it in 2011 for a price that has since been reported as €3.25m in the Dutch press.

A spokesman for RBS told the Irish Independent: "We are not prepared to comment, other than to state that we are respectful of the investigation by the Dutch authorities and are co-operating fully with it."

Mr Hourican was not available for comment but his spokesman told this newspaper that he had lost money on the Dutch property.

"John bought the house and spent a lot of money on it, including stamp duty and the cost of refurbishment," said the spokesman.

Ireland apologises for 'slave labour' at Magdalene Laundries

Taoiseach Enda Kenny forced into finally saying sorry for 'the hurt and trauma' caused to up to 10,000 Magdalene women

guardian.co.uk, Henry McDonald in Dublin, Tuesday 19 February 2013

Women in one of Irealnd's Magdalene Laundries in the 1940s.
Photograph: Roz Sinclair/Testimony Films

The Irish State has finally said sorry to 10,000 women and girls incarcerated in Catholic Church-run laundries where they were treated as virtual slaves.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was forced into issuing a fulsome apology on Tuesday evening to those held in the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland.

The apology in the Dáil (Irish parliament) came about two weeks after a damning 1,000-plus page report was released detailing the way women and girls were maltreated inside the nun-controlled laundries.

Survivors groups were enfuriated when the Irish premier initially declined a fortnight ago to explicitly apologise for the state's role in sending women and girls into the Magdalene Laundries, sometimes simply for coming from broken homes or being unmarried mothers.

In a powerful speech to a packed Dáil Eireann, Kenny made some amends for what many view as a major error of judgment on the day the report was released.

At the end of his address, Kenny appeared to break down briefly, choking back tears as he quoted a Magdalene woman's song to him during a meeting recently.

The Taoiseach said what happened to the Magdalene women had "cast a long shadow over Irish life, over our sense of who we are".

He said he "deeply regretted and apologised" for the hurt and trauma inflicted upon those sent to the Magdalene Laundries.

Apologising to the women and girls of the Magdalene Laundries, he told parliament that they deserved "the compassion and recognision for which they have fought for so long, deservedly so deeply."

He said he hoped "it would help us make amends in the state's role in the hurt of these extraordinary women."

Kenny also announced a governnment-funded memorial to remember the 10,000 Magdalene women.

As Kenny made his announcement, former residents of the Magdalene institutions held a vigil outside the gates of the Irish parliament in Dublin's Kildare Street where they lit candles in memory of all those sent to the laundries.

The apology was accompanied by the announcement of a fresh compensation package for around 800 women still alive who were held in the laundries across Ireland. A senior Irish judge would be appointed to oversee how the survivors are looked after.

The compensation deal will include counselling services, healthcare and individual payments, which Dublin hopes can be implemented without the involvement of lawyers and hefty legal bills.

Amnesty International accused the Fine Gael-Labour government of ignoring women exploited in laundries that operated across the border in Northern Ireland.

The report, headed by Senator Martin McAleese, found that the Irish State was complicit in sending girls and women to the laundries where they received no pay. However, the McAleese report did not cover Magdalene Laundries run in Northern Ireland up until the 1980s.

Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty's director in Northern Ireland said: "Magdalene Laundries operated in Northern Ireland into the 1980s. I have spoken with women survivors of these institutions who now fear being left behind, with no inquiry in place – north or south – into their suffering.

"It is clear that any new inquiry announced by the Irish government will only investigate abuses in the Republic of Ireland, while the Historic Institutional Abuse Inquiry in Northern Ireland will only investigate abuse suffered by children, rather than by the many grown women who were held in Magdalene Laundries."

Related Articles:

Magdalene laundries a 'kind of Irish torture'

Irish PM: Magdalene laundries product of harsh Ireland

The Vatican's Irish problem

Struggling borrowers in Ireland could claim debt forgiveness

Mortgage Finance Gazette, Joanne Atkin, August 7, 2012

From next year borrowers in the Republic of Ireland who have unsustainable mortgage debt may be able to ask for debt forgiveness.

This is due to the Personal Insolvency Bill which was published on June 29 and is due to come into force in Ireland in 2013.

However, Moody’s have said this will increase banks’ losses on existing mortgage books.

Currently Irish mortgage borrowers who default on their loan can lose their home and be liable for the total outstanding debt for at least 12 years.

From 2013 mortgage borrowers who qualify as insolvent will be able to enter a Personal Insolvent Arrangement (PIA) with their creditors, if at least 65% of total creditors agree, which for most people will effectively mean their mortgage provider.

This arrangement would see the mortgage reduced to the current market value of the property, while the borrower would continue to live in it.

Although this may resolve the mortgage arrears and negative equity situation for the banks and eventually aid the recovery and strengthen the bank’s balance sheets, mortgage audit company Rockstead says this legislation will not benefit holders of Irish residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS).

In February 2012, Moody’s said that originators of Irish RMBS would not be required to buy back loans subject to PIA. As the majority of the servicing is undertaken by the originator in Ireland, the power to veto a PIA will therefore rest with the originator.

Rockstead says it is generally acknowledged that the Irish market has significant issues to address and the lack of qualified staff in collections, recoveries and quality assurance oversight has not helped asset holders to address these issues with urgency.

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What We Can Learn From Iceland

Channel:  Wanderer of the Skies - April 14, 2012

“… Your nation of Iceland is being used as a testing ground for the rolling out of financial strategies for the betterment of your planet. It would be wise to follow their progress in this respect, as it will be the fate of all nations in a very brief period of time. We have always advised you that such an action would never come from the larger powers and nations of the world, but they will follow in lockstep once the actions begin their domino effect…..”