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Ex-Anglo Bank Chief Faces 33 Charges If Extradited To Dublin

BOSTON (AP) — Court documents unsealed Tuesday show that Ireland hopes to prosecute the disgraced former chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank for 33 counts of fraud, forgery and other crimes if he is extradited from Boston to Dublin.

The disclosure, reflecting six years of Irish police and corporate fraud investigations into David Drumm, came days after his arrest in his luxury Massachusetts home and hours ahead of his appearance in a Boston court to face an extradition warrant. If returned to Ireland and convicted of the most serious charges, the warrant said Drumm, 48, could face "an unlimited term of imprisonment."

Anglo was the failed institution at the heart of Ireland's 2008-13 financial crisis. It was the most aggressive lender during Ireland's decade-long construction boom, gambling borrowed tens of billions on continued runaway growth in property values at home and abroad. When the 2008 global credit crunch exposed Anglo's fragile finances, the Irish government introduced a state-backed guarantee on Anglo debts in a failed bid to reassure investors.

By early 2009, the government nationalized Anglo and its toxic property portfolio at an ultimate estimated cost to Irish taxpayers of 29.3 billion euros ($34 billion) — a bill so large it overwhelmed Ireland's ability to finance itself and led to a humiliating 2010 bailout. Ireland dissolved Anglo in 2011 and still is trying to sell many of the half-built property assets funded by the bank.

Drumm and his wife fled to the United States in 2009, bought a 4,000-square-foot, $2 million home in the upscale Boston suburb of Wellesley, then filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection in a bid to avoid repaying 8.5 million euros ($9.7 million) in Anglo personal loans. Drumm argued the home was his wife's, not his.

In January, a Boston judge, Frank Bailey, rejected Drumm's bankruptcy case in scathing terms, citing the banker's efforts to conceal millions in assets and testimony riddled with what he called "outright lies." Drumm's appeal of that ruling accuses the judge of bias and his legal team of incompetence.

In the Irish warrant published Tuesday, Drumm faces a string of charges:

— Making false or misleading disclosures to Anglo shareholders that concealed the existence of the bank's single biggest investor and the extent of that holding.

— Organizing illegal loans to help other elite bank clients secretly buy Anglo shares in a failed 2008 bid to bolster the bank's collapsing stock value.

— Forgery and falsification of loan agreement letters designed to provide a bogus front for those share purchases totaling 451 million euros ($513.6 million).

— Conspiracy to defraud shareholders by negotiating a series of deceptive deposits involving rapid back-and-forth transfers with other colluding Irish banks. Anglo used these 2008 maneuvers to add nearly 8 billion euros ($10 billion) in make-believe corporate deposits to its earnings statements.

Most of the charges carry maximum penalties of five to 10 years imprisonment each, but the warrant says a conviction for conspiring to defraud shareholders "carries a maximum sentence of an unlimited term of imprisonment."

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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