Irish Life and Permanent's ex-chief executive Denis Casey insists authorities knew about a controversial transfer to Anglo, writes SIMON CARSWELL

THE SUBMISSION of a sworn statement by former Irish Life & Permanent (ILP) chief executive Denis Casey to official investigators comes as the Government prepares to publish two reports into the causes of the banking crisis.

While the authors of the reports will only assess the period in the run-up to the Government bank guarantee in September 2008 in a general way, Mr Casey raises serious issues about the official handling and treatment of Anglo both before and after that crucial date.

Concerned that investigators – the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation and the Director of Corporate Enforcement – have not yet contacted him, Mr Casey has taken it upon himself to volunteer a sworn statement and submit it to them and the Financial Regulator.

Some 17 months since the controversial €7.45 billion day-long deposits between Anglo and ILP emerged publicly – costing Mr Casey his job – the investigations drag on.

In his statement, Mr Casey claims that the September 2008 transaction arose from encouragement by Pat Neary, the chief executive of the regulator, and John Hurley, governor of the Central Bank the previous March, when they requested ILP to participate in the so-called “Green Jersey Agenda”.

This involved Irish banks supporting each other with “mutual in-market support”, he said.

“The September 2008 transaction between ILP and Anglo Irish Bank arose as a consequence of that request,” he said.

The regulator has already said it did not approve the transaction in advance and would not have supported it, had it known.

Mr Casey states that neither ILP nor any of its staff members received a fee for the Anglo transaction, that it was accurately recorded and accounted for in ILP’s books, and that it was “promptly and accurately reported” to the regulator and Central Bank.

“In addition, senior executives in ILP discussed both the nature of the transaction and the context for the transaction with senior staff in the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank during 2008, some considerable time before Anglo presented its 2008 financial statements,” said Mr Casey.

His statement focuses on a key date in early December 2008 when Anglo published its annual results for the financial year to the end of the previous September.

At the time, all eyes were on the level of customer deposits reported given the unprecedented turmoil suffered during the month of September.

Deposits were broadly the same as a year earlier, the bank reported, but no reference was made to the €7.45 billion transaction. This only emerged two months later, after the resignation of Anglo’s top management over Sean FitzPatrick’s hidden loans and the bank’s nationalisation.

Casey claims the Department of Finance, the regulator and the Central Bank knew of the ILP deposits into Anglo before the bank’s results in December 2008 but that “no effective intervention was made at the time by any of the agencies to scrutinise or influence the manner in which Anglo reported that transaction”.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said in February 2009 that he had not seen details of the transaction in the report until January when officials in his department brought it to his attention.

Mr Casey has also questioned how Anglo reported the ILP deposits. He claimed they were backed with collateral from Anglo and so, under accounting rules, should have been “netted off” where there is “a right of set off”. In other words, the money should have been presented by Anglo as inter-bank, not customer deposits.

ILP had earlier declined Anglo extra cash as the bank couldn’t provide collateral to back it, he said.

Mr Casey said he was aware that the Government and the regulator have repeatedly said that in September 2008 Anglo was “systemically important”.

He said that he wants the “execution and presentation” of the September 2008 transaction – which “occurred in the context of the extensive systemic support and patronage enjoyed by Anglo” – thoroughly investigated “as quickly as possible”.

“I continue to hold myself available to assist in any such investigation,” he said.