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THE CHAIR OF the Oireachtas Finance Committee said he is shocked following his meeting today with the Central Bank over how the bank acted after a complaint from former Unicredit Ireland executive and whistleblower Jonathan Sugarman.
Sugarman and Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness met with Central Bank Governor Philip Lane to discuss the issue.
Following the two-hour long meeting, the Central Bank released a statement confirming that Lane met with the pair – adding that it had investigated the Unicredit claims and that it considered the matter closed.
However, both McGuinness and Sugarman feel that the issue remains unresolved.
The Fianna Fáil TD said he thought it was “extraordinary” that the Central Bank carried out its investigation into Unicredit without speaking to Sugarman, the whistleblower who reported the breaches.
“I would have thought he would be central to the investigation,” he added.
Sugarman said he was hoping for a better outcome from today’s meeting, stating that he still thinks his concerns are being ignored.
“I walked in hoping I would get somewhere but the attitude was so counterproductive. Surely after ten years we have all seen the consequences of a lack of regulation. We are discovering that now with the tracker mortgages,” he added.
Sugarman – the bank executive-turned-whistleblower – has been fighting this case for over ten years. He was the risk manager at Unicredit Bank Ireland in 2007. This was the Irish arm of Italian firm Unicredit, one of the largest banking and financial services companies in the world.
It was Sugarman’s job to make sure that the company’s Irish arm was sticking to the rules.
However, only a few weeks after joining Unicredit, Sugarman said that he started noticing liquidity breaches.
What are liquidity breaches?
Liquidity is how much money a bank has available. When banks lend money out, they have to hold a certain amount of cash or assets so that they can give people their money back if debts are called in.
The lender was allowed to drop below a certain percentage point, but any breach in excess of this was meant to be reported to the banking regulator, the Central Bank.
Sugarman said Unicredit Ireland was frequently breaching its liquidity requirements, and on occasion would only be holding enough cash and assets to meet 70% of its debts.
Uneasy with what he had found, he resigned from Unicredit after notifying the Central Bank of the issue. He also turned himself in to Rathmines Garda Station in 2009 but alleges nothing was done.
At a recent meeting of the Finance Committee, where Jonathan Sugarman previously gave evidence, it was agreed with the governor that he would arrange this meeting – that meeting took place today.
McGuinness told TheJournal.ie this afternoon that the manner in which Sugarman has been treated for highlighting wrongdoing sends out all of the wrong messages to whistleblowers.
“They are afraid and I can understand why,” he said.
Obviously today’s meeting was a box-ticking exercise, they ticked the box by closing the case and letting it remain close. I think the Irish people would like to know the answers as to what they did after the investigation into Unicredit. Did they fine the bank? Did they penalise them in some way – what did they do?
It wasn’t a satisfactory meeting, it was quite shocking…
I would have at least expected them to arrange a further meeting with Jonathan Sugarman on his own so that he could give the full-scale of the facts and then let the bank determine against their analysis and investigation whether or not there were gaps in what they were told.
No follow-up meeting scheduled
McGuinness said the Central Bank had no interest in meeting with Sugarman again, even though he believes Sugarman can offer an insight into the culture within the banks.
“The offer was there from Mr Sugarman to inform them, to give them information, to be available to them, at the very least, and the answer from the bank without any consideration was no – case closed.
I can’t accept that this case is closed, I will not accept it. I hope the Central Bank will review what was said at that meeting… and decide to do something different than to close their eyes to what is happening.
“It is all very relevant and it is as relevant today in terms of regulation as it was back then,” he said.
It is beggars belief how they could not take into account what was being said this morning. I was quite shocked by it.
Let down by the Central Bank
McGuinness said the Central Bank has let down Sugarman, stating that as a risk manager, Sugarman followed the legislation to the letter by reporting the breaches.
“He walked in the front door of that bank and told them about a wrongdoing and told them about a breach in law and … they never spoke to the person that made the complaint and that in itself is quite shocking,” he said.
Sugarman told TheJournal.ie that he doesn’t regret his actions.
“I don’t regret it because I can look myself in the mirror. I am a proud citizen of this country and when I pledged allegiances to it, I pledged to uphold its law,” he said.
McGuinness said he will now bring a report of this meeting to the attention of the Finance Committee members.
A statement from the Central Bank acknowledged the importance of whistleblowers in the financial sector, stating that they can provide valuable information to the Central Bank in order to help it to achieve its regulatory mandate.
It added:
All such disclosures are investigated and actions are taken, when appropriate. Actions may include the issuance of supervisory warnings or risk mitigation programmes to firms, and in more serious cases may result in administrative sanctions and fines.
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Lol that Trump is still running the grift of taking donations for a campaign he already lost, and the Trumpists are falling for it.
Yup, you’d have to be particularly challenged if you’re an Ordinary Joe to hand over your hard earned to (a supposed multi-billionaire) the orange grifter. Businesses yep can see it, because they’ll have their Lobbyists chasing for their pound of flesh in return. But normal working folk, all Trump see’s is an opportunity. Like setting them up to march on Capitol Hill, pretending he was going to be there with them. And still they drink from his KoolAid fountain….
Small.print says not all the funding has to go to legal challenge. This is a scam to raise campaign funds for 2025
@John Mulligan: There will be no campaign by Trump Senior in 2024, 100%. That’s money will end up in a family account, like the Charity scam the Trump org ran before his Presidency. He’s a one termer, a couple of years out of office and he won’t want to go through any the bull involved in campaigning again. He’ll be 78 too, and I don’t see his health getting better unless they wean him off McDonald’s…..
@John Mulligan: remember though, if he’s impeached, he is banned from running for office, for life!
@Peter Cavey: and he doesn’t get the 200k pension, or access to security briefings as ex presidents do if impeached. Which as you know would be used and abused.
@Peter Cavey: Watch Trump junior though, he’s free to run!
@Charlie: the Trumps have burnt far to many bridges with the Republicans to run agian.
@Peter Cavey: Only if he’s found guilty and convicted. Impeachment alone does not prohibit holding federal office at a future date.
@John Mulligan: He will be a short lived independent in the 2025 election
@John Mulligan: small print also says up to 50% will be used to pay off 2016 campaign debts. Suckers just keep giving.
@John Mulligan: It is a slush fund. Impeach Trump senior: stops him running again. Next thing is to ruin the trump brand to stop the kids. Hit them where it hurts: go after financial irregularities; watch the sponsors and partners pull away like the PGA. Make the brand as toxic as the individuals. Sure he’ll still have the redneck followers but they can’t afford Trump resorts and those who can afford it won’t go there.
Populist nonsense, what we should be worried about is large companies picking and choosing who they want to do business with and for what reason. While I have no time for Trump I have no time for those who choose to wait to kick a man when he’s down. It would have been a much more powerful statement to have carried out this action at the beginning of his term.
@Sean Higgins: Businesses can deal with whomever they want to. Doesn’t matter what your position is in life.
@Sean Higgins: 100% agree, it’s opportunistic and disingenuous to say the least. All of these firms contribute to Rep and Dems on a regular basis and now see the populist wind blowing away from the lunatic Trump they decide to get morals/conscience,if he had succeeded in his challenge they would’ve put out some generic mealy mouthed press release and kept on dealing with him. This doesn’t bode well for further discourse or debate or difference of opinion in the US ,and as usually does such attitude will seep to rest of the world, with their famous first amendment under serious threat from revisionists. But to the victor go the spoils I guess.
@Sean Higgins: that’s the point really isn’t it. Like Twitter banning his account after the fact too.
@Sean Higgins: quite enjoy seeing him being kicked while he is down.
@Sequoia: eh.. not exactly true Companies are not allowed to do business with whomever they like and not those they dislike that is the actual definition of discrimination.
It’s almost as if fame is lucrative and fickle.
@Sequoia: which reminds me of a controversial news that a religious business owner who refused to make cakes for homosexual couples years ago. The time has changed.
Too little too late from Stripe. They were happy to channel payments when payments were high and the gravy train was flowing. Stripe are only now P.R. campaigning and virtue signalling in an attempt to dissassociate themselves from a failed politician and at a time when his fund payments have significantly slowed. The Collissons brothers merely trying to save face.
@Shane McGrath: The Collison brothers are trying to save face ????? Are you having a laugh
If only Twitter and others went after those who actually incite voilence.
This tweet from June 3rd 2018 violates Twitters TOS, yet still stands: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784
Hypocrites.
@Daniel Dunne: Unfortunately because it’s not popular or in mainstream media Twitter won’t bother about this one.
@Daniel Dunne: twitter should be boycotted for the complete bias.
They’re all a bit late with this! There is nothing surprising about what trump did. Remember Charlottesville? They all continued to enable him after that. Hypocrisy
@Critical Thinker: I think if they took this step before last Wednesday they would have been open to all sorts of litigation
@Dannys Dentures: not just such companies, but politicians, the media etc. They were happy enough to go along with it previously
@Critical Thinker: when you say they all, you really mean the GOP? Because they have had control of the senior house during his Presidency and as a party could have brought him into line much earlier if they had a mind to. Like Mitch McConnell on Wednesday when finally condemning Trumps challenge of the election results, they can and should have done the right thing from day one of Trumps candidacy. But they left him on a long leash because they knew he would do the dirty work for them, and in the aftermath they will look to put the blame entirely on his shoulders alone….
Nothing more than PR. Any and all of these companies could have made s moral stand 6 months ago when he said the protesters (KKK) were good people.
Rats deserting a sinking ship
@Rhoda Cunningham: these companies had 4 years to dump Trump, yet they all jump on the bandwagon when he’s two weeks from leaving office.
Why did this not happen years ago?
Sad populist, bandwagon jumping nonsense
Why bother? Tokenism at this stage
All these platforms can remove a president. They can remove you. That’s the message here, look at the rise in decentralized platforms this year. Nobody can remove your access to bitcoin.
That’ll hit him hard.
Unfortunately, we’ll. ever get to hear what the Don thinks of all these actions
@Sequoia: really heartfelt of them. I mean now that Trump is officially politically destroyed it’s safe financially to do the right thing or be seen to do so. Much of the worlds problems right there folks
Now they need to pull it from all his businesses.
@Gillian O’Coinne: no they don’t!!
My post was deleted. If the company had genuine moral problems with Trump and had any courage they would have done this years ago. A toothless decision for cheap publicity.
Why wait this long? Where there’s a buck to be earned….
Bit late
That’ll hit him hard.
Unfortunately, we’ll. ever get to hear what the Don thinks of all these actions
@Sequoia: If Donald Trump isn’t back on social media soon I will be amazed. And if he doesn’t invest in a platform or hosting services for that platform I will be equally surprised.
@Jim Lingk: hopefully
@Jim Lingk: he will put up a platform….until he figures out how much it costs to run it ……won’t be long dumping it then……
Big friggin deal!!!
You wonder what the valuation of Stripe has to do with Trump.
But he was encouraging violence long before this happened so why didn’t they act before now?
Wow… banking sanctions on the peoples republic of Trump
Dissenting opinion won’t vanish because tech CEOs ban it. That’s not how life is.
have your say