Mark Keenan reported in The Independent last week that:
"...In 2005, Dublin-based Cologne RE played a pivotal role in a sham scheme to inflate the reserves of US insurance giant AIG -- the scandal that originally brought the IFSC its international "wild west" monicker. US Investigators heard that "Cologne RE was seen as an ideal location for the fraud because Dublin "did not report to anyone" and so avoided the "North American problem" of financial regulation.
In 2007, German bank Sachsen LB needed a bailout when it was discovered that its two Dublin-based investment vehicles had insufficient assets to cover their liabilities.There was the Depfa bank scandal. The subsidiary of Hypo real Estate ran into trouble in 2008, eventually prompting a bailout by the German government that is still the biggest in Irish banking history.
The regulator still won't reveal what action, if any, had been taken against Unicredit's IFSC subsidiary in 2007 when whistleblower banker Jonathan Sugarman, then its risk manager, shopped his bank to the Irish regulator after alleging that its liquidity reserves were 20pc below the legally required limit. Sugarman has since claimed the regulator's office did nothing about it.
Meantime, 16 executives from the parent company, including the CEO, are going on trial in Italy for cooking the books in that year.
So what did Mr Elderfield first make of Dublin when he arrived here from Bermuda back in 2009? Was there much cleaning up to do?..."
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ifsc-banks- circle-their-wagons-as- elderfield-tries-to-tame-wild- west-3214910.html
And in case you were wondering what took Mr. Elderfield to Bermuda in the first place, here is a quote from The Independent in June 2010:
"THE watchdog brought in to clean up Ireland's banks was the official responsible for supervising Northern Rock in the months before the collapsed bank applied for its first bailout.
The Irish Independent has learned that Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield oversaw the regulation of Northern Rock in the three months to August 2007...."
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/regulator- helped-supervise-northern- rock-before-bailout-2211123. html