By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN – Tanaiste Mary Harney, who has been granted permission to extend the scope of a probe into the Australian-owned National Irish Bank by two court-appointed inspectors, has been accused of “hijacking” the investigation process.
NIB’s chief executive, Graham Savage, said Harney appeared to have taken the most damaging and most public way of using information from an interim report completed by an authorized officer.
Harney had said new “disturbing and astonishing” evidence had come to light as a result of the investigations of the officer from her Department of Enterprise.
The investigation centered on allegations that special insurance products sold by NIB were being used for widespread tax evasion. The so-called Ansbacher deposits are also being investigated. Interim reports on both were given to her.
“When I put all of what I now know from these interim reports together, it is disturbing because it indicates to me that there was a group in our society – an influential group of people – for whom the laws were not important,” Harney said.
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“They were oblivious to the law. They didn’t seem to want to pay their fair share of tax and they used every vehicle they could to avoid their responsibilities.”
The NIB interim report found that _48 million was invested in just under 500 policies, of which 400 involve Irish residents.
Two inspectors, Justice John Blayney and accountant Tom Grace, are already investigating NIB and their report will become public when it is delivered to the court.
The inspectors will now also probe the bank’s subsidiary NIB Financial Services Ltd., which sold the controversial CMI insurance policies at the center of the allegations.