The former chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank was found guilty Wednesday of fraud and false accounting at the institution whose rapid fall from grace epitomised the Irish financial collapse.
David Drumm, 51, had denied conspiring to inflate deposits in the bank by 7.2 billion euros ($8.5 billion) in 2008, at the start of the crisis which would see Anglo Irish taken into government hands.
He was accused of transferring huge sums between his bank and another financial institution, sometimes only for a few hours, to make the bank’s balance sheet look better than it was.
The jury took almost 11 hours to reach a verdict, after a trial lasting 86 days.
Drumm moved to Boston in the United States shortly after the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank, but was arrested and returned to Britain in 2016.
Following Wednesday’s verdict he was released on bail sentencing on June 20, when he can expect a lengthy prison sentence.
Two of Drumm’s Anglo colleagues and the former head of Irish Life and Permanent – the other financial institution involved in the fraud – have already been jailed over the same conspiracy.
Anglo Irish Bank required a huge state bailout and was nationalised in 2009, contributing to an economic crisis in Ireland that later forced Dublin to seek an 85-billion-euro-international rescue.