The public accounts committee has heard that estimates on the levels of bogus non-resident accounts at Allied Irish Bank were disputed internally by senior management. Former Group General Manager Brian Wilson told the DIRT inquiry that figures quoted by the former internal auditor Tony Spollen were incorrect. He added that they were not supplied by the source Mr Spollen had claimed.
Tony Spollen was head of internal audit at AIB for five years. He said he was completely unaware of the scale of bogus non-resident accounts until his last year with the bank. This morning the Public Accounts committee heard about a series of letters he wrote to top level management expressing his concern about the widespread problem. Mr Spollen said he was alarmed after 53,000 non-resident accounts, worth £600million were found to be bogus. He estimated the bank could have owed £10million in back tax for a six-month period. His letters to management were demanding action to deal with the problem.
This morning Mr Spollen said suggestions that he was trying to embarrass people at the bank by stirring up the problem were scurrilous. He denied it had anything to do with efforts to transfer him at the time. Mr Spollen said the people he worked with for 22 years were his friends and he would not have turned on them. However he did leave the bank just months later for reasons that he said he has always kept to himself. He told the committee he felt it was time to go, but admitted that his departure was not something he had planned.
