Morning Ireland

by Richard Dowling

The name John Rusnak is one that many listeners will remember. He was a currency trader for AIB’s US division, Allfirst, and ran up losses of nearly three quarters of a billion dollars. It was, at the time, the biggest bank fraud ever. Morning Ireland was the first to break the story on February 6th, 2002. I was programme editor that day.

There was a hint the night before that something big was stirring. I had been talking to the night editor, Shane McElhatton, discussing what was to be on the programme the following morning. He mentioned that the boss of a large Irish PR company had been on. AIB was one of their clients and the bank boss would be in studio in the morning to talk to us about something.

That was it.

We hadn’t asked for him and they couldn’t tell us what the story was - just that we would want him.

And we did.

Morning Ireland started at 7.30am in those days and Michael Buckley, the then-Chief Executive of AIB arrived shortly before the programme went on air. The bank had just issued a statement to the world’s financial markets saying they’d uncovered a huge fraud at their American bank, Allfirst.

They had to tell the markets first and then tell the shareholders and the public. Morning Ireland was the ideal vehicle to get the story out.

It was huge and I remember sitting at the desk before the programme went on air thinking of who we needed to contact to get reaction. We needed reaction, and we needed it fast.

As the programme began, Michael Buckley sat facing Cathal MacCoille across the desk in the studio. The interview ran and ran as details emerged of the scam….how did it happen…. how much….for how long…..

No names were mentioned that morning but it wasn’t long before the name John Rusnak emerged. All that was said on the day was that a Foreign Exchange Trader at the Bank’s Baltimore headquarters had run up losses estimated at $750million and hidden them from his bosses.

Our business reporter, Geraldine Harney, joined the studio debate with Buckley after a few minutes with updated market reaction and a few questions of her own for the AIB boss.

That was the easy bit. Getting reaction from the business world proved hugely difficult. Geraldine and I had hit the phones….calling people, telling them the news….what was their reaction….would they talk to us on air?

I remember one London commentator, who worked for a UK bank, laughing when Geraldine told him, saying this couldn’t possibly be. It was she insisted. He went silent. He couldn’t come on air - he had to protect his clients immediately.

It was a similar story from many of the other financial experts Geraldine contacted. Her phone call was the first many had heard about the scam. Usually they didn’t have a problem coming on air. This morning they did. They had work to do.

While the frantic phone calling went on, so did the programme. There were other stories -- children reacting to an Impressionist exhibition and the expected Tribunal into claims of garda malpractice in Donegal. We did manage to get some reaction from commentators but it was still too early in the day to get what I really wanted. The enormity of the scandal literally made commentators and traders vanish.

The programme finished as usual but the story would go on and on. I remember watching the BBC Ten O’Clock news that night and it was their lead story. What had started on Morning Ireland had spread around the world.