Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm faces being in custody until March after a US judge refused him bail while he fights extradition to Ireland.

The 49-year-old Dubliner will spend Christmas in custody after Boston Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell denied his request to be released on bail pending the hearing of his extradition case, which is due to begin on March 1st, 2016.

The decision is a major setback for the former banker who has been detained since his arrest at his home in Massachusetts on October 10th.

He faces the prospect of spending at least three months in detention fighting extradition on charges, on which two of his former colleagues were convicted in the Irish courts but were spared jail.

Mr Drumm is wanted back in Ireland to face 33 criminal charges relating to transactions carried out while he was chief executive of Anglo during the deepening financial crisis of 2008.

The judge said the former banker had “not established the presence of special circumstances sufficient to overcome the presumption in favour of detention in extradition cases”.

Mr Drumm stood down from Anglo in December 2008, the month before the bank was nationalised. He moved to Massachusetts six months later. The bank has since cost the Irish public €29 billion.

Judge Cabell said that the seriousness of the charges against Mr Drumm provided him “with an incentive to flee”. His “background and experience in international matters and his presumed substantial assets provided him with the ability to flee if he were so inclined”, said the judge in his 11-page ruling.

Judge Cabell said a US bankruptcy court’s finding that Mr Drumm intentionally failed to disclose assets transferred to his wife and an appeal court judgment upholding that decision had a bearing on his ruling. They “unquestionably bear as a matter of common sense” on his credibility, said the judge.

Personal plea

Mr Drumm promised to relinquish his and his family’s passports and to remain under home detention 24 hours a day, seven days a week under the watch of a security guard hired by his employer.

He made a personal plea at a November 13th hearing, speaking for about seven minutes in the Boston court, imploring the judge to release him on bail to prepare his case. “I didn’t run then,” he said when he learned he might be facing extradition in January. “I’m not running now.”

Rejecting Mr Drumm’s argument that his former colleagues at Anglo were granted bail while awaiting similar criminal charges, the judge said that these defendants were “not similarly situated”. They were his “subordinates, charged with fewer crimes, voluntarily cooperated with Irish authorities and voluntarily surrendered in Ireland”.

Significant resources

He rejected his argument that the Government showed a lack of urgency in waiting several years to try to extradite him. The delay in charging Mr Drumm was “attributable, at least in part, to his own decision to relocate to the United States”, said Judge Cabell.

In response to Mr Drumm’s argument that his role as his family’s sole source of income was grounds for release, the judge said that he and his family “ostensibly appear to have significant resources to draw upon”.