BBC News, 30
June 2013
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Stories
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| Executives at Anglo Irish Bank were recorded laughing and swearing as their bank faced collapse |
The
recordings were leaked to the Irish Independent newspaper and last week it
published a series of articles giving details of the bankers' conversations.
Senior
Anglo executives were heard joking over the bank's massive losses.
In an Irish
Central interview, Mr Drumm said he was "shocked and embarrassed" by
the content of the tapes.
He said
there was "no excuse for the terrible language or the frivolous tone and I
sincerely regret the offence it has caused".
"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."
The phone
conversations have caused widespread anger among taxpayers and government
ministers in the Irish Republic.
They were
taped in September 2008, as the Irish government was in negotiations to bail
out a number of banks, amid an unprecedented financial crisis.
Laughing
The
government issued a blanket guarantee for deposits in Irish banks, effectively
making taxpayers liable for the debts run up by the institutions.
In the
recordings, Mr Drumm can be heard laughing as one Anglo executive sings the German
national anthem, as deposits flowed in from Germany as a result of the
government guarantee.
The former
CEO was also recorded setting out Anglo strategy in trying to persuade the
Irish Central Bank to give financial support to their failing institution.
He told his
executives to go the the central bank with their "arms swinging" and
demand more money saying: 'We need the moolah, you have it, so you're going to
give it to us and when would that be?'
In more
colourful language, another Anglo executive, John Bowe, is heard saying that he
plucked a figure of 7bn euros out of thin air, when the authorities asked how
much money would be needed to rescue the bank.
Mr Drumm,
who ran Anglo between 2005 and 2008, later moved to the United States, where he
filed for bankruptcy.
'Highly
stressful'
In an
interview for the American website Irish Central, the former bank boss said the
first he heard of the Anglo tapes was when he logged on to the Irish
Independent last Monday in New York.
"I
knew they were bad, bad, bad," Mr Drumm said.
He was
asked by US-based journalist Niall O'Dowd if he regretted the language he had
used in the calls.
The former
banker said: "I accept that the tone and language used in the tapes is
inappropriate and I fully understand why the excerpts published have offended
many people.
"Listening
to a recording made almost five years ago at a highly stressful and volatile
uncertain time is both embarrassing and a shocking reminder of how much
pressure my colleagues and I were under at that time."
Inquiry
Mr Drumm
has denied claims that Anglo executives misled both the government and banking
regulators over the true scale of the bank's losses.
The
government rescue package for Anglo eventually cost Irish taxpayers around 30bn
euros, which the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said was the "single
biggest financial transaction ever made in history of our state".
The failed
bank was nationalised in 2009 and the following year, the Irish government
needed a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF).
Mr Kenny
has said the Anglo tapes have damaged the Republic's reputation and he wants to
set up a parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of the bank.
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