DUBLIN: An Irish banker who was taped saying he would demand cash from authorities to keep operating and making light of a 2008 bailout, prompting criticism around Europe, apologised for his comments in an interview published on Sunday.
Public outrage has grown after the Irish Independent published taped telephone conversations between executives of the now-defunct Anglo Irish Bank, wrecked in 2008 when a property bubble burst after years of reckless lending.
David Drumm, then-chief executive of Anglo Irish, had said he would demand ‘moolah’ – slang for money – from the central bank in tapes of conversations that mocked a bank guarantee that pushed Ireland into years of austerity.
In his first public comments since the tapes were published, Drumm told the Sunday Business Post that the recordings were made at a stressful and volatile time but there was “no excuse for the terrible language or the frivolous tone”.
“I sincerely regret the offence this has caused,” the Sunday Business Post quoted Drumm as saying.
“I cannot change this now, but I can apologise to those who had to listen to it and who were understandably so offended by it.”
Reuters has not been able to contact Drumm, who now lives in Boston.
The bank eventually cost taxpayers some 30 billion euros during the financial crisis, almost one-fifth of the country’s annual output, and three former executives – not including Drumm – will go on trial next year on fraud charges.
The tapes have caused offence in the European Union (EU), which helped to pay for Ireland’s bailout, and Irish premier Enda Kenny said they were a ‘thunderbolt’ that showed contempt, arrogance and insolence.
One executive, John Bowe, was taped singing a pre-war verse of the German national anthem during a conversation with Drumm as they discussed money flowing in from Germany after the governments guaranteed the banks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the recordings were “impossible to stomach”. — Reuters