David Drumm to spend at least 10 more days in detention centre

Bail hearing postponed until October 26th as former Anglo chief’s lawyer needs more time

Donald W Wyatt Detention Centre in Central Falls, Rhode Island, is about 70km south-west of Boston.
Donald W Wyatt Detention Centre in Central Falls, Rhode Island, is about 70km south-west of Boston.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm will spend at least the next 10 days in a detention centre in Rhode Island while awaiting a bail hearing in his extradition case in the Boston courts.

Mr Drumm is being held at the privately-run Donald W Wyatt Detention Centre in Central Falls, a small town in Rhode Island.

The centre is used for pre-trial detentions by US Marshals, the agency responsible for arresting and holding federal prisoners.

The detention centre confirmed that the 48-year-old former banker was brought to the Rhode Island facility on Tuesday.

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He appeared in the US District Court in Boston on the same day.

His detainee number is 2024037 and the number used by the US Marshals to identify him in the federal system is 97039038.

The Rhode Island facility holds just over 700 inmates and is sometimes used to hold detainees for longer periods.

A bail hearing to decide whether Mr Drumm should be released pending his extradition hearing was postponed from Friday until Monday, October 26th as his lawyer, Boston attorney Tracy Miner, needed more time to prepare his case and gather information from Ireland.

Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell told Mr Drumm that the presumption in extradition cases was that the defendant would be detained in custody pending the hearing of their case.

Ms Miner said that she would be seeking her client’s release pending the hearing of his extradition case. She argued before the judge that Mr Drumm’s detention was a presumption, “not a fait accompli.”

He was arrested in the Boston area last Saturday by US Marshals acting on an extradition request from the Government of Ireland.

Individuals facing extradition have previously been held at the Rhode Island facility. An American student from Massachusetts was held at the facility while awaiting extradition to Scotland to face charges relating to the poisoning of a university classmate in 2011.

Boston lawyer Norman Zalkind, who represented the student, said the facility was "a clean place", but they don't allow detainees to have contact visits with families or friends, just with lawyers and doctors.

“It is fairly safe. It is very polite, but they don’t give you very much. There isn’t many amenities. If you need medication and stuff, it is a difficult place,” he said.

Mr Drumm is wanted in Ireland on 33 charges including forgery, conspiracy to defraud and false accounting, in relation to the Maple 10 scheme that involved lending to buy Anglo shares and the back-to-back deposits between Anglo and Irish Life & Permanent in 2008.

His lawyer told the court on Tuesday that Mr Drumm plans to challenge the extradition and that the request may have been sought “for a political purpose.”

Simon Carswell

Simon Carswell

Simon Carswell is News Editor of The Irish Times