Few would disagree that there is an urgent need to put the drug and crime barons out of business and to stamp out money laundering and fraud but there appears to be serious concern at the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation that it is not getting the help it needs from the financial institutions to do the job.
This came to a head last weekend when Chief Supt Frank Glacken took the unusual step of accusing some banks and building societies of failing to bring suspicious transactions to the attention of the bureau. He accused some financial institutions of being selective in the way they interpret the Criminal Justice Act of 1994, which requires them to report suspicious activities.
Chief Supt Glacken, who has been head of the bureau since it was set up in April 1995, told The Irish Times this week that he had to question whether the banks and building societies were serious about assisting the Garda. Asked if he was frustrated in his job he replied: "I am not angry or frustrated. I am a professional doing my job. I go home at night and I don't think of the banks or the building societies. I sleep soundly." A member of the Garda for 38 years and a native of Crossmolina, Co Mayo, he enjoys his current position which he describes as "challenging and rewarding".
Garda sources say he is adamant that everyone must be treated equally under the law. "I don't distinguish between people, whatever their position," he says. Colleagues say he is well known for resisting pressure to drop investigations or to treat professional or well-off people favourably. One source suggested Chief Supt Glacken may have been transferred at one stage of his career for refusing to bow to political pressure to drop charges against a prominent local farmer. His reputation for treating everyone equally fits well with his current brief where he has to tackle so-called white-collar crime. He has not been slow to build cases against solicitors and accountants.
But some sources suggest his real target now is senior bankers. He wants to let the industry know that the Garda is serious in expecting it to adhere to the letter and the spirit of legislation and to push the banks into being proactive rather than reactive in protecting customers and managing staff.
In April, a senior official at an AIB branch in a County Cork town was questioned for 12 hours by bureau detectives about allegations that his branch was used to launder money from a tax evasion building fraud operated by Irish sub-contractors in Australia. A file is being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
One Garda source said there have been cases of fraud by bank employees where the employees had already come under suspicion in another location. Instead of informing the Garda, the employees were transferred and put "in charge of money in the new location", he added.
For some time, Mr Glacken has felt he is not getting the co-operation he needs from the financial institutions. He believes they are not active enough in reporting suspicious transactions and that their insistence on requiring that the Garda produce court orders before details of customers' accounts will be disclosed is out of line with the spirit, if not the letter, of the Criminal Justice Act 1994.
Asked why he thought the banks would not report suspicious transactions he says: "I don't know . . . only the banks can answer that."
In addition, other sources say that banks and building societies regularly refuse to provide security videos to the bureau when it is investigating the opening of bogus accounts. The excuse is "client confidentiality". Yet videos are regularly handed over after branch robberies. Chief Supt Glacken declined to discuss this issue. The focus of the bureau is wider than money laundering and bogus accounts. Chief Supt Glacken feels the financial institutions could take more active roles in preventing credit card and cheque fraud. "Why is it that people can lodge cheques in an account and withdraw cash instantly?" he asks. And he feels the banks are facilitating credit card fraud by not taking steps to ensure traders check signatures properly and that amounts are verified.
Among the recent rewards of his job has been the securing of a conviction in the Jehle money laundering case. Swiss national, Maria Bernadetta Jehle was convicted on two charges of handling money knowing it to be the proceeds of other persons' criminal activities using Irish bank accounts. The accounts were in AIB in Cahir and the TSB in Midleton.
It is understood that the bureau is unhappy with the level of co-operation received from a particular financial institution in that case.
All financial institutions are now required to establish the bona fides of anyone opening a bank account as well as to report suspicious transactions on accounts to the Garda. On bogus bank accounts - accounts set up by Irish residents claiming to be non-residents - Chief Supt Glacken asks whether the financial institutions feel obliged to report all such accounts still in existence and active to the Garda or just the ones set up since the Criminal Justice Act 1994 came into force in May 1995. He questions how the banks are interpreting the legislative requirements and asks if the banks feel they are not required to report any accounts set up before 1994. Why are such accounts being operated? he asks.
Following a review of all of its non-resident accounts, which was completed in September 1991, AIB had to pay £10 million in Deposit Interest Retention Tax to the Revenue Commissioners. Internal audits at the AIB and Bank of Ireland uncovered evidence of the use of bogus accounts for tax evasion purposes in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. The AIB review found 53,000 bogus non-resident accounts containing nearly £600 million held by Irish resident customers aiming to avoid tax or to hide their financial affairs from the Revenue Commissioners.
Since then the banks have tightened their controls, pushed by more stringent legislation which increased the onus on them to ensure people opening non-resident accounts were genuinely non-resident in the Republic. But Chief Supt Glacken appears to be concerned that a line has been drawn in the sand covering older non-resident accounts which are still active. Chief Supt Glacken sees his role as ensuring that white-collar fraud is treated just as seriously as the more obvious crime of bank robbery. And he warns bank customers:
"There is an obligation on everyone to mind their own money. You lock your house at night to keep out robbers. You should mind your bank account in the same way. It is much easier to rob."
