ANGLO IRISH Bank has queried expenses of €88,000 charged by former Irish Nationwide chief executive Michael Fingleton after he again refused to repay his controversial €1 million bonus or return a €11,500 retirement watch.
The bank wrote to Mr Fingleton on Tuesday rejecting the reasons for his refusal to return the bonus and the watch, and inviting him again to return them along with a further €88,000 in “suspect” expenses.
Anglo, which took over Irish Nationwide in July, queried bills of €12,180 incurred by Mr Fingleton for dental work while chief executive and £2,373 (€2,600) for a two-night stay at the Dorchester Hotel in London for himself and his wife after he left the building society in 2009.
In a letter seen by The Irish Times, the bank told Mr Fingleton that these expenses "appear to have been claimed inappropriately and you have provided unacceptable and unsupportable explanations".
The bank also queried expenses of €73,524 from 2005 to 2009, including almost €48,000 spent at the K Club hotel and golf resort.
This included four years of club membership fees at €8,000 a year.
Mr Fingleton maintained in earlier correspondence with the new management at Irish Nationwide that any expenses incurred were for the promotion of the business of the building society and developing customer relationships.
“It is not at all acceptable for you to simply state that costs were incurred reasonably on behalf of the society without providing verifiable details,” Anglo chief executive Mike Aynsley said in his letter.
The bank requires details about the nature and reason for the expenses, including receipts “and other supporting documentation”, he said.
Mr Fingleton could not be reached for comment yesterday despite calls to his mobile phone.
A man answering his phone who said he was his brother took a message but the call seeking comment was not returned.
Anglo called on Mr Fingleton to “behave in a decent, proper and honourable way” and return the bonus, watch and expenses. “It is plain that you should deal with each of the above matters by returning the watch to the bank, by providing full repayment of the bonus and by reimbursing the above inappropriate expense claims and that you ought to get on with doing so without further ado,” Mr Aynsley said in the letter.
Anglo confirmed that a letter had been sent to Mr Fingleton but would make no further comment.
Among the expenses queried by Anglo is a €6,000 payment charged to Irish Nationwide in 2006.
The bank said in the letter that the expense related to Mr Fingleton’s bid on and purchase of a Gucci watch at an auction for the Jack and Jill Foundation charity which he returned to be re-auctioned and later claimed as an expense from the society.
The bank also queried a €7,000 bill paid for a two-night stay for Mr Fingleton and five guests at the Westbury Hotel in Dublin in February 2009 – two months before he left the building society.
A further €5,323 was paid to Mr Fingleton in cash for several trips including to the US and Russia.
Another €3,742 was spent on a week-long trip to Dubai in 2005.
Anglo also raised questions about a total of €2,360 spent on private chauffeur-driven cars for Mr Fingleton and a customer on various occasions in 2007 and 2008.
Mr Aynsley disputed Mr Fingleton’s assertion in his letter to Anglo on September 10th that the watch purchased for his retirement in April 2009 was provided on behalf of management and staff. Anglo maintains that the watch was paid for by the building society.
Mr Fingleton said he had not repaid the contractual bonus as promised, as the last minister for finance, the late Brian Lenihan, reneged on an agreement that they had reached.
Mr Aynsley disputed that any such agreement existed. He described Mr Fingleton’s responses as “not satisfactory”.
The bonus was paid in November 2008 – two months after the then Government intervened to rescue the banks by introducing the guarantee, the third anniversary of which falls today.
“The payment of the bonus should never have been paid to or accepted by you in the circumstances concerned,” he wrote.
“Without the State rescue, the society would definitely have failed, with catastrophic consequences, and the payment of your bonus, whether contractually due or not, could not have been met.”
He told Mr Fingleton that he must “surely recognise the inappropriateness of your receiving a bonus of €1 million at a time when it was abundantly clear that dire consequences were flowing to this State and its citizens as a result of extraordinary losses arising from reckless decisions made during your stewardship of the society”.
The State is having to inject €5.4 billion into Irish Nationwide to cover losses on loans made mostly to builders and property developers.
Anglo and Irish Nationwide, which were both nationalised, are due to be run down over 10 years.
