The Ansbacher Report will be published today, and 200 people and companies will have a deal of explaining to do. In future, society's termination to see white-collar criminals brought to book will rest with Paul Appleby, the new Director of Corporate Enforcement. Colm Keena looks at the man and his task
While most of the seismic changes in the Republic in the past decade have had to do with the collapse of the authority of particular institutions, the opposite is the case with white-collar crime.
Until recently the policing of white-collar crime has been a joke, and a pretty bleak one at that. Workers were paying punitive rates of tax while more powerful members of society were laughing all the way to the offshore bank. The more significant the scale of the crime, the less likely you were to face scrutiny let alone punishment.
While this was a source of frustration to many citizens it must have been all the more frustrating for Paul Appleby (46), now the Director of Corporate Enforcement but who was, until a few years ago, part of the two-men-and-a-candle team which oversaw the enforcement of Irish company law.
Company law is not the sort of phrase that gets Hollywood producers salivating but is in fact the heading under which such white-collar crimes as tax evasion and fraud are found. The late Des Traynor's secret Ansbacher operation, for instance, was a company law offence, involving as it did the operation of a bank in this jurisdiction without due authorisation and the establishment of a registered office.
An odd aspect of the non-enforcement of company law here during the 1990s and before was that it occurred against the backdrop of a significant number of acts of the Oireachtas outlining a complex body of law. Just as in the area of planning, we drafted and enacted the laws and then proceeded to ignore them.
Appleby and his colleagues, working in a small number of offices over Reynards night club in South Frederick Street, Dublin, had the unhappy brief of working on the drafting of these complex laws while at the same time being aware that the resources were simply not there to enforce them.
When Mary Harney was appointed Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment in June 1997, she came to the Department determined to provide the resources necessary for company law enforcement. The McCracken tribunal and the discovery of the Ansbacher deposits provided a huge impetus to this project.
As a result of the report Harney appointed an authorised officer, Gerry Ryan, to investigate Celtic Helicopters. Because of its dealings with the Ansbacher deposits this inquiry into a small helicopter company led in time to inquiries into Guinness & Mahon, Irish Intercontinental Bank and Ansbacher.
Highly sensitive information concerning some of the better-known business figures in the State and gathered as part of these inquiries was kept under lock and key in the South Frederick Street offices. Appleby, as head of the company law administration section, was privy to much of what was happening as the investigations progressed.
This occurred alongside what Appleby has described as an "explosion" of company law activity. There was an inquiry into Garuda Ltd, the company owned by Michael Lowry. There was the decision to appoint an authorised officer to two Dunnes Stores companies, a move which has led to a protracted legal tussle which has to date involved a number of High Court and Supreme Court hearings and which rumbles on. Appleby has been involved and may in time take responsibility for the inquiries should they go ahead.
The revelations concerning National Irish Bank, the sale of unauthorised offshore bonds and the overcharging of customers led to further authorised officer inquiries and in time the appointment of High Court inspectors, again involving Appleby's company law section.
In 1999, when the Tánaiste applied to the High Court for the appointment of inspectors to investigate Ansbacher Cayman, it was Appleby who presented the case to the court by way of affadavit.
"The affairs of were conducted in circumstances which would suggest that they were designed to defraud a creditor of the company, namely the Revenue Commissioners," he told the court. "The affairs of the company may have been conducted with intent to defraud the creditors of other persons" (i.e. its Irish resident customers) "or for a fraudulent purpose."
In the affidavit Appleby publicly named a couple of individuals, including the property developer, John Byrne, and the Cork businessman, Clayton Love, as well as, in differing contexts, Doyle Hotels and Cement Roadstone Holdings. This was seen by many as evidence of the new, tougher approach the State was committing itself to.
The decision to draft terms of reference for the inspectors which required them to not only investigate the affairs of the unauthorised banking operation, but also to name its Irish resident customers, was a key move. Without it the speculation as to the identity of the Ansbacher customers, and the true nature of the Ansbacher operation, would have persisted for years.
Overall the development signalled the end of the road for the State's non-enforcement of company law.
The appointment of the inspectors came alongside a number of other ground-breaking developments. The Companies Registration Office has been given extra resources, a permanent Company Law Review Group has been put in place, and the establishment of a Single Financial Regulator has been decided on. For Appleby a key development was the establishment of a new agency, the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement.
The office was established in November 2001, and Appleby was appointed director-designate following an open competition. The agency has a staff of approximately 30, which includes solicitors and accountants, and also has seven gardaí seconded to it.
The latter have raised the prospect of suspected corporate offenders finding themselves being hauled down to the station for questioning. Time will tell. Likewise time will tell if all this corporate enforcement is to lead to prosecutions for white-collar crime and more people going to jail. However, it does seem that the Rubicon has been crossed.
A key idea behind the creation of Appleby's office was to remove the possibility of a new minister down the line being less keen on the enforcement of company law.
The structures now in place remove the issue from political control. Appleby was given a copy of the Ansbacher inspectors' report two weeks ago and is to publish it this morning. It will fall to him now to prosecute any instances of breaches of company law suggested in the report.
Those who know him say he is steely and determined, the true nature of the man concealed by the image of the archetypal civil servant. He can come across as quiet, reserved, meek even. "Anyone who underestimates him does so at their peril," says a colleague. "He's tough when he needs to be."
There was no disguising his pleasure when the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Finnegan, surprised everyone with the speed with which he ruled that the inspectors' report should be published in full.
Likewise it is generally believed that the past few years, while at times pressurised and difficult, have been exciting ones for the career civil servant.
Married with two children, when he gets some time for himself he plays golf or goes for a long walk.