Could this be Irish bank executives?
Former Icelandic bank executives jailed for fraud
Two former executives at an Icelandic bank which collapsed in the 2008 financial meltdown were sentenced to jail on Friday for fraud which led to a €53m loss, in the first major trial of Icelandic bankers linked to the crisis. above left Gudmundur Hjaltason jailed for nine months.
All three of the small North Atlantic island’s top banks collapsed in quick succession in October 2008 due to big debts incurred during a rapid overseas expansion.
Glitnir was the first to fall after the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused international credit markets to freeze up.
A Reykavik court sentenced Glitnir’s former chief executive, Larus Welding, and former head of corporate finance, Gudmundur Hjaltason, each to nine months in jail, of which six months were suspended for two years. They had denied the charges.
Prosecutors said the two approved a loan to a company which owned shares in Glitnir so that the company could in turn repay a debt to Morgan Stanley.
The decision, taken outside the regular decision-making process, meant Glitnir was too exposed to the company and cost the bank at least 53.7 million euros ($71 million), the prosecution said.
The sentence was less than the jail terms of at least five years demanded by Iceland‘s special prosecutor, who is looking into alleged wrongdoing connected to the crisis.
“We have a conviction, which is of course the main thing,” prosecutor Holmsteinn Sigurdsson told reporters outside the courtroom when asked whether he was disappointed with the length of the sentence.
The special prosecutor is also looking into alleged wrongdoing linked to the collapse of the other two former top banks, Landsbanki and Kaupthing.
After 90 years as an illegal citizen in US, Josephine gets her green card at last
Josephine Stout with great-granddaughter Jolisa Stidhum at home in Chicago
IT’S taken 90 years since she was born in a poorhouse in Co Limerick for a woman dubbed America’s oldest illegal immigrant to get her Irish passport.
And it will be a few more months before Josephine Stout will finally be declared a US citizen, entitling her to a pension and other benefits.
Despite having lived in America for most of her life, since she arrived on the RMS Franconia in 1923, the great-grandmother was declared an undocumented alien in 1999 when she tried to claim state aid to help raise her seven grandchildren who were left orphaned when her daughter was stabbed to death by a robber over $20.
Even though she has never considered herself Irish, noting “I don’t even have an accent”, she didn’t officially exist as an American when officials in Chicago insisted that she prove her citizenship in order to qualify for benefits.
But she had no birth certificate or passport when she arrived on an immigrant ship from Ireland with her parents who had 12 other children.
She never gave the matter much thought until 1999 when she was nearing the age of 70 and needed assistance to raise her grandchildren.
For 12 years Mrs Stout managed to eke out a meagre living through odd jobs. But her life was hard and marked by tragedy. Her husband died in 1996 and her son Thomas was stabbed to death with his girlfriend in 1985. Her only surviving child, Rosemary, died of cancer in 2009.
A Catholic charity referred her case to the Chicago Irish Immigrant Support Centre, which alerted the Irish Consulate. Through them they tracked down her birth certificate, it was reported on website irishcentral.com and in the ‘Chicago Tribune‘.
The document in turn allowed her to receive her Irish passport and eventually her American green card in September 2011 which was backdated to November 1, 1923.
She has been promised that her case for American citizenship will now be fast-tracked.
An Post to raise the price of stamps by 5%
AN-Post has a New Year delivery that won’t please many customers — a 5% hike on the price of a stamp.
The postage company wanted to raise the standard price of a stamp by 10 cent to 65 cent but was limited to a 5% by the communications regulator.
As a result it will soon cost up to 60c to send a letter weighing up to 50g within Ireland.
ComReg rejected a request by An Post for a 10c increase.
An Post will now have to find another way of dealing with its deepening financial woes.
It believed it would make an extra €14m this year if it got the regulator’s backing for the 10c stamp price hike.
The State-owned postal service already stands to make €8m from a hike in the cost of posting packages, which was approved last summer.
It argued that it had not put up the price of standard post since 2007.
But ComReg did not believe allowing the price hikes would address An Post’s “cash burn” problems. It said the extra revenue of €22m it expected from the price hikes would only cover a third of its losses this year.
It expects An Post to lose €65m as it struggles to cover its costs as the only universal service provider in the State, following €50m losses last year.
The regulator has told An Post it must find an extra €43m savings on top of any increase in the price of delivering mail.
It fears it could run out of money in the next two years after its cash balance fell from €350m in 2008 to €150m at the end of 2011.
The regulator believes that price hikes would bring a bigger decline in the volume of mail this year than the 5pc per year fall predicted by An Post.
An Post complained that delays by ComReg in approving its application had made its financial situation worse.
Dublin house prices up 4.2% in 2012
The relatively modest growth came as a result of a rise in prices for houses in Dublin, with many first time buyers taking advantage of the valuable mortgage relief scheme which ends this month.
House prices in Dublin are showing tentative signs of recovery with latest figures showing an increase of 4.2 per cent so far this year.
However, while that jump can be seen as a partial return to health, the overall picture remains bleak with values still down 54 per cent on their peak 2007 levels.
The Residential Property Price Index figures for the month of November, released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today, also reveal that Dublin based apartments have plummeted in value by 11 per cent to date in 2012.
And at a national level, residential properties have reduced in value by 5.7 per cent this year.
Rises and falls in specific areas of the country outside Dublin are not easy to calculate accurately due to the low level of sales.
There was a total of 2,752 property transactions recorded in November although not all of these represent full market value.
The performance of the housing sector is recorded on a monthly basis but the overall picture is best viewed towards the end of any given year, or as a year-by-year comparison.
The ‘year-to-date’ figures are likely to identify early signs of recovery across the market which has been decimated in the last five years.
“The good news has to start at some stage and it does take time to work its way through these [other] indicators,” said a CSO spokesperson.
More than 70% of pharmacies targeted by shoplifters
Almost three quarters of Irish pharmacies were victims of crime this year, according to the Irish Pharmacy Union.
The union have called for more Garda protection for their businesses, and tougher sentences for those who break the law.
In 2012, 71% of pharmacies surveyed had experienced shoplifting, with one in four raids involving the use of a weapon.
Figures show that cosmetics and fake tan are the most likely targets for shoplifters.
New arrival at Fota Wildlife Park Cork
Cuileann and mum
There was a Christmas addition to Cork’s Fota Wildlife Park, as a giraffe calf named Cuileann made her public debut.
She was born a week before Christmas.
Fota Wildlife Park’s Facebook page says: “The arrival of Cuileann is the third giraffe calf in 5 months at Fota Wildlife Park following the births of Casey in July and Aoibhinn in August.
“Cuileann was born to mum Roisin and dad Tadgh, the oldest giraffes at the park.”
Head warden Willie Duffy told The Irish Independent: “With Roisin being 21, we were worried about her giving birth and how the stress would impact on her and the little calf. But she coped very well.”
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