Shamed banker David Drumm is living in a €1 million four-bed seafront mansion, The Star can reveal.
We witnessed Drumm (53) — who was convicted for his part in a €7.2 billion fraud, entering and leaving the property with a set of keys throughout on Monday — before confronting him and asking about the flashy new home.
“You’re disturbing me,” he replied, adding “Sure, you’re going to write what you’re going to write.”
He then got into a BMW after earlier being spotted sizing up one of the front windows of the home with measuring tape.
The four-bedroom pad features an impressive balcony which overlooks the sea, and is almost 200sq m in size.
Drumm, who cooked the books of the failed Anglo Irish Bank in the months before it imploded in 2008, was released from prison in February of last year — after serving three years and four months of a six-year sentence.
The fraudster was released early from Loughan House open prison on February 15, 2021 under a community service return scheme.
Drumm, who was jailed here in 2018, was also given credit in his sentence for serving five and a half months in a US prison where he had previously fought his extradition.
The Irish authorities brought the former banker back to Ireland to face 33 charges including forgery, conspiracy to defraud and false accounting linked to Anglo transactions in late 2007 and 2008, when it was scrambling to avoid collapse.
He was eventually found guilty of two charges of false accounting and conspiracy to defraud.
In the 2018 sentencing, Judge Karen O’Connor said Drumm engaged in “grossly reprehensible behaviour” and his motivation to keep Anglo open, as his defence team argued during the 87-day trial, was “irrelevant” and “does not provide any excuse for fraud and dishonesty”.
In an eight-page ruling, the judge said Drumm, as chief executive of the bank, held “a position of trust, when he authorised, directed and was actively involved in this dishonest and fraudulent scheme”.
“This offending was premeditated and planned, and in fact the evidence was that significant planning went into this fraud,” she said in her ruling at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
The judge stressed she was not sentencing Drumm for “causing the financial crisis” or “for the recession that occurred”. The offending did not cause the bank to collapse, she added.
The court was only sentencing Drumm on two offences: conspiracy to defraud and false accounting in relation to the €7.2 billion transactions.
“In this case, two ‘blue chip’ publicly quoted companies conspired to manipulate the public accounts of Anglo Irish Bank,” said Judge O’Connor.
“Mr Drumm, along with others, put together a dishonest scheme and engaged in transactions designed to inflate deposits from a non-banking entity to Anglo Irish Bank on 30th September, 2008, which was the reporting year-end date for that bank.”
Drumm spent the first months of his sentence in Mountjoy Prison — before he was moved to the open facility in Loughan House in January 2019.
Thanks to remission, Drumm is now a free man, though any bad behaviour could see the remainder of his sentence re-activated.
Drumm conspired with former Irish Life and Permanent chief Denis Casey in a deal to save the bank. Ex-senior Anglo staff Willie McAteer and John Bowe were also jailed for their roles.
Anglo was taken into State control in January 2009 following a run on its deposits and plummeting share prices.
Bailing out Anglo cost the taxpayer €30bn — and caused nationwide anger during an economic crisis.
Following his conviction, it emerged Drumm was able to keep his €4.4m pension fund — despite owing at least €13m to creditors.
A US court ruled he had ‘knowingly and fraudulently’ tried to hide assets from his creditors but that still won’t stop him from keeping his pension, which is protected under Irish law.
Drumm was forced to give up other assets his creditors claimed through the courts, including a mansion in Malahide, worth €2.5m, and a home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, valued at €5m.
The properties were sold quickly and earned €1.5m and €3.3 respectively for his creditors.
