Dukes the Crook

No Honour Among Thieves

When watching the Siteserve/Alan Dukes/Ann Nolan saga the old adage “no honour among thieves” springs to mind. We all know Dukes orcastrated the military style takeover of the Quinn Group. We all know Dukes sold Quinn Direct insurance to Liberty for a purported €1, ignoring the viable plan which the Quinn family presented which would have returned €2.8billion back to the taxpayer. What most people may not realise is the connection between Dukes and Ann Nolan in the Department of Finance.

In February 2009 Donal O’Connor wrote to the Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan. A previous draft of that letter had said: “As requested, I enclose a report on the extent of lending for the purposes of share acquisitions and contracts for difference generally and Anglo shares in particular” (this was Anglo admitting that they were lending money to support their own share price – which was totally illegal). The Quinns found a note (unfortunately for Ms Nolan) in Anglo files to say that Ann Nolan had agreed to look over this letter before it was sent to Lenihan. When the letter did go out there was a significant change in wording, with Anglo no longer admitting that they were lending the money to prop up their own shares. Ann Nolan was watching Alan Duke’s back.

How things have changed however. Yesterday, when Ms Nolan was talking about IBRC in front of the PAC she said “I think there was a culture there, both at board and senior management level and down through it, that never really recognised the damage they’d done to the country and that felt that their independence should mean that they weren’t answerable, even though they had taken quite a lot of money from us,”. Of course the arrogant Mr Dukes couldn’t let that lie and sent a press release to journalists today. We have attached it for your perusal…..(or for your amusement).