IBRC lawyers say Drumm a most dishonest debtor

A US judge was correct in refusing to allow former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm walk away debt-free through bankruptcy because it "would be hard to imagine a more dishonest debtor", the bank's lawyers have argued.

In a filing to Massachusetts District Court, lawyers for Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, formerly Anglo, rejected Mr Drumm's grounds for an appeal against Judge Frank Bailey's decision to deny him a discharge from debts of €10 million in a ruling in January.

Mr Drumm, who filed for bankruptcy in the US in 2010, has appealed the ruling, which leaves him facing financial ruin.

He blamed his lawyers for his failure to disclose to court the transfer of more than €1 million in property and cash to his wife, Lorraine, from September 2008 when Anglo was nearing collapse.

Judge Bailey concluded, following a trial last summer, that Mr Drumm systematically transferred the assets to hinder, delay and defraud creditors. Mr Drumm’s conduct was “both knowing and fraudulent” and his statements to the court replete with “outright lies”.

IBRC’s lawyers told the higher court in a filing yesterday that Mr Drumm’s entire approach to US bankruptcy “mocks” the principle that a discharge is reserved for those who make full financial disclosures. The former banker “fell far short of his obligation of full disclosure” by intentionally omitting countless items from his official bankruptcy statements and “engaging in evasive conduct throughout the bankruptcy proceedings,” the bank said.

“Drumm’s ever-changing explanations, misstatements, evasive answers, flippant remarks and supposed ‘misunderstandings’ were not remotely credible, as the bankruptcy court correctly found,” they said. The bank noted that Mr Drumm’s appeal case did not challenge eight of the 30 counts on which he was denied a debt write-off and that the bank only had to prevail on a single count to deny him a discharge.

Noting his argument that the judge made a “clear error,” the bank said Mr Drumm ignores the judge’s credible determinations and “fails to grapple with his lies and unreliable testimony,” instead asking the appeals judge to “reweigh the evidence.”

“Drumm claims that he must be a victim of a series of innocent mistakes because he never would have thought that he could get away with such sweeping wrongdoing while [his bankruptcy] trustee and the bank were closely investigating his affairs,” said IBRC’s lawyers.

“But people who lie so readily and easily often do so with indifference to the consequences of their dishonesty.”

IBRC argued that Mr Drumm “tries to excuse his misconduct by shifting all blame to his advisers”, yet they say that he cannot point to any advice he received “upon which he reasonably relied.”

Mr Drumm has two weeks to file a response and the sides can then chose to make brief oral arguments before District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ahead of his ruling on the appeal.